Heart of Steel- Volume I: Up, Up and Away
by WilyGryphon
Summary: Kara Zor-El's pod crashes on Destiny Islands, where she is taken in as the adoptive sister of Sora. When the Heartless consume the Islands, Sora and Kara set out on their adventure together, to find Riku and Kairi and to make sure no other worlds fall to darkness. (Cross-posted on AO3)
1. The Girl in the Rocket

**Chapter 1**

**The Girl in the Rocket**

The sun shone bright on the Destiny Islands, its light reflecting and shimmering on the ocean waves. Several islands basked in its light as the grown-ups worked and the children played.

On a small island that was only a mile away from one of the larger islands, six children built sand castles together. Among them, there were four boys and two girls. The oldest among them were a fair-skinned boy with green eyes and silver hair, named Riku, and a well-tanned boy with brown eyes and orange hair styled into a fauxhawk, named Wakka. At the shared age of eleven, they were deemed old enough to command the rowboats on their own and take their friends to the island without adult supervision. The others were a ten-year-old boy with a light tan, blue eyes, and spiky brown hair named Sora, a ten-year-old girl with fair skin, indigo eyes, and dark red hair named Kairi, a nine-year-old boy with a light tan, blue eyes, and light brown hair named Tidus, and a nine-year-old girl with fair skin, blue eyes, and brown hair that curled up at the tips named Selphie. While they were all very close, they tended to sort themselves into trios more often than not, influenced in part by how Sora and Riku's parents and Kairi's adoptive parents were close friends themselves, how Tidus, Wakka and Selphie grew up in the orphanage together, and how Sora and Riku had been the first ones to find Kairi when she first appeared.

That calm, breezy June day was just like any other, or at least that was what they thought. In the process of adding a tower to his, Sora and Kairi's sand castle, Riku stopped when he felt a sudden change in the wind. Curious as to what brought about such a shift, he looked out to the sea, then up to the sky. He shielded his eyes from the sun's glare and squinted to make out an unusual shape as it broke through the clouds. He gasped and lost his balance, falling onto the sand castle and causing it to collapse.

"Aw, man," Sora complained. "What gives, Riku?"

"Look!" Riku pointed into the sky. His friends followed his gaze and gasped as they saw a dark object falling from the sky. After a few seconds, they realized that it was not going to hit the island but rather land in the water. The younger kids were relieved, but Wakka quickly recognized what it meant for them.

"Everyone get to higher ground, ya!" he warned, speaking in a thick accent that he had picked up from one of the elementary school teachers.

Following his lead, the kids ran up the beach, climbing up a ladder until they reached an elevated walkway on the wooden fort that had been built years ago around the trees and rock wall. While Riku, Wakka, and Sora reached the walkway and Kairi, Tidus, and Selphie were still climbing, the object crashed into the water, creating a huge wave. Kairi and Tidus made it up and Tidus helped Selphie up as the wall of water swept over the beach, slapping against the rock wall before draining back out to sea. The rowboats were tossed around, but because they were tied securely to the pilings on the short pier stretch, they did not go far. The shovels and pails that the kids had brought, however, were carried out to sea. Fortunately, the wave did not rise nearly high enough to threaten the kids on the walkway.

When the water calmed back down, the kids stared out to see what had crashed. It appeared to be a metal capsule with thin fins extending out of the back. It did not seem to be very big, no more than fifteen feet in length. Riku estimated that it was only submerged in the water halfway up, having crashed in deep water but propelled itself up into the shallow end, digging a rut in the sand which piled up on its sides. There seemed to be something different about the hull on one side, as if it were a glass cover.

"Let's take a look!" Sora said excitedly. He did not wait to hear Riku's protest of caution before he climbed down the ladder and began running down to the water. Riku sighed at his impulsive friend while Kairi and Selphie giggled. Relenting, Riku climbed down after him, and the others followed suit. Sora ran into the surf and began swimming when he got deep enough. He quickly noticed that the water had become warm from the object, which had to have been incredibly hot on entry. When he reached the capsule, he stepped up onto the wall of sand that had been pushed up around it and began to examine the hull. He touched the metal and found it to be very warm, but it had cooled significantly when it landed in the water and was not searing to the touch.

He turned back to the island and cupped his hands around his mouth. "Hey, I think it's a rocket ship!" he shouted as loud as he could to his friends, who in the meantime had climbed down off of the fort and were back on the now-wet sand. Encouraged by Sora's lack of concern and their own curiosity, they ran down to the beach and began to wade in. Riku and Kairi joined Sora around the rocket while Tidus, Wakka and Selphie hung back to observe from a distance.

Sora, Riku and Kairi tried to look into the glass cover, but the sun reflected a glare off of it, and they could not see what was inside. Riku climbed on top of the ship and leaned over to try to block the sun as much as he could while he and the others looked inside. They all gasped when they saw what was sitting in the ship.

They saw what appeared to be a human girl, about ten or eleven years old, from what they could guess. She had fair skin, blue eyes and wavy blonde hair, and she wore a plain white tunic and pants. She looked up at the island children in fear and confusion.

Sora and Kairi smiled in an attempt to reassure her that she was not in any danger. "Don't be scared. We're not going to hurt you," Kairi said.

The girl said something in response, but they could not understand her. Sora and Kairi looked at each other with perplexed expressions, hoping that the other had been able to make out what she said, but they were equally lost.

"It's nothing I've heard before," said Sora, who, as the son of a linguist, was at least somewhat familiar with many different languages, but this was not one of them.

"Let's try to get it open," Riku suggested.

The others nodded. Sora made eye contact with the girl. "We're gonna try to get you out of here," he told her, rapping his knuckles on the glass and opening his hands like a book to convey what he meant. The girl nodded, seeming to understand. She looked around the cockpit to see if there was any way she could open the capsule from inside, but if there was something, she could not find it.

Riku climbed down and stuck his fingers at the lip of the lid to the capsule as best he could. Sora and Kairi did the same. On Riku's count, they tried to pull the ship open with all of their might, but to no avail; they did not even manage to budge it. They only managed to dig their feet into the sand.

Riku stopped trying to lift the lid, and his friends gave up as well. He put his hand to his chin as he considered what to try next. "I'm going back to town and get help," he told his friends.

Sora and Kairi nodded. "We'll stay here and keep her company," Kairi replied. Riku nodded and swam back to shore. He explained the situation and rallied Wakka and Tidus to accompany him. They climbed into one of the rowboats, untied it, and set off for their home island.

Sora and Kairi turned back to the girl. "Our friend is going to get help. Sit tight." He knew that she would not understand his words, but he was sure that if he maintained a friendly tone, she would understand the heart behind his words. He pressed his hand against the glass, offering his comfort and friendship. The girl reached up to put her hand on the glass, lining it up with Sora's. She smiled, seeming at ease despite still being trapped.

Sora put his hand over his heart, gesturing to himself. "I'm Sora," he introduced himself.

"I'm Kairi," the redhead said.

The girl took a moment to register their names, then spoke up. "Kara," she said.

They remained there for a little over an hour before they heard the whirring of a motor. Sora and Kairi turned around and saw that a speedboat was arriving at the island. Among the passengers were Riku, Wakka and Tidus, Riku's father, Wilson Malverne, Sora's mother, Rosetta Danvers, Kairi's adoptive mother, Dolores Kelley, and half a dozen others. They had brought a range of tools, probably more than were necessary and likely including some that were not necessary, but it seemed like it was better to be safe than sorry. Wilson and one of the other men each carried a crowbar, which the children were certain would be helpful. Sora and Kairi turned back to Kara, only to see that she had tensed up. They quickly gave her reassuring smiles to let her know that help had indeed arrived.

The speedboat pulled up a few feet away from the ship. Wilson and his crowbar-wielding companion asked Sora and Kairi to step aside so they could work. Rosetta and Dolores scooped their kids up into their arms and brought them onto the boat. Wilson told Kara to stay calm, and the men shoved their crowbars into the thin space under the cockpit lid and pushed down. After a few seconds, they heard the hinges creak. After a few more seconds, the lid popped open. Water lapped into the cockpit, but Kara was only hit with a few scant drops. The men stuck their crowbars in the sand and lifted the lid up manually. Wilson helped Kara out of the ship and carried her into the speedboat, setting her down on one of the seats.

Dolores knelt down so that she was level with Kara and checked her pulse. "Are you alright?" she asked. Kara answered with an unintelligible phrase, much to the grown-ups' confusion.

"Fascinating," Rosetta mused, curious about both the language and the embroidered symbol that was now visible on the front of her tunic. The design resembled a diamond shape with a stylized "S" inside. "Can you tell me your name?" she asked. Kara simply blinked, not understanding what she was saying.

"She said her name was Kara," Sora answered.

Kara nodded, now understanding what Rosetta had asked. "Kara Zor-El," she added.

Rosetta smiled. "My name is Rosetta Danvers. You've already met my son, Sora. Kara smiled in Sora's direction. Sora grinned in return and crossed his hands behind his head. "Your language is very interesting, Kara." The girl returned her attention to the linguist. "Would you mind telling me where you came from?" Kara furrowed her brow in confusion. Rosetta chuckled, remembering that Kara could not actually understand her. After considering for a moment how she would convey what she wanted to ask, she pointed at the rocket, then traced a line up into the sky with her finger.

Kara nodded, understanding. "Krypton," she answered.

The grown-ups blinked in confusion, equating the name to the element. They had never heard of a place whose name related to a noble gas before, and wondered where Krypton could be.

"Is that your home?" Rosetta asked.

Despite not understanding the word, unless it sounded similar to her language's own word for "home", Kara seemed to understand the meaning, and nodded. Tears began to well in her eyes and her expression turned sad. Everyone looked on as Kara began to cry.

"What's wrong?" Sora asked, forgetting that Kara would not be able to answer.

"Oh. It's okay, Kara. It's okay," Rosetta whispered, pulling Kara into a comforting hug.

* * *

Riding in the speedboat, they all returned to the main island of Hopena, except for Wilson, who took Selphie with him in Wakka's rowboat and rowed back that way. On the way back, Riku, Tidus, and Wakka introduced themselves to Kara, and Selphie did the same when everyone reunited on the dock. When they were on stable ground, Dolores checked to make sure that Kara was healthy, which she appeared to be. The grown-ups discussed what they should do regarding the newcomer. Sora suggested that she could stay with him and his parents, to which Rosetta agreed.

They escorted Kara through the town. A crowd began to gather as word spread of the girl who appeared in a spaceship, but Dolores told them to shoo, not wanting them to bother Kara, intentionally or not. Sora held her hand to assure her that she was secure with them. As they walked, Kara looked around, taking in the sights in what was undoubtedly an unfamiliar environment. Riku noticed from her expression that she seemed to be looking for something, or someone. Was she not the only one to travel through space?

When they arrived at the Danvers' house, Kara was introduced to Sora's father, Reeve. The Danvers family offered to let her rest, but she seemed to have no interest in going to sleep, and she did not appear to be tired. Reeve made her a sandwich, and she ate it happily.

They quickly determined it to be a priority to establish a means of communication. Over the following weeks, Rosetta worked to teach Kara the English language. She taught her the alphabet by developing a romanization of the Kryptonese alphabet, and then set about teaching vocabulary and grammar, while she and her family learned Kryptonese in turn. In the meantime, Sora and Kara came up with their own form of sign language, which they also shared with Riku and Kairi. Kara was withdrawn at first, as she had difficulty adjusting, but the island kids were able to get her to open up. The bond between the island children and the Kryptonian girl grew, as Sora came to care for Kara like she was his own sister.

When Kara had a good enough understanding of English, Rosetta, Reeve, and Sora decided to ask her about where she had come from. What Kara described sounded like something out of a science-fiction novel, a world filled with skyscrapers, flying vehicles in place of cars, fantastic creatures whose closest comparison to what the islanders knew to be real were dinosaurs, and intelligent robots and computer systems. She recounted how her father, Zor-El, was a scientist while her mother, Alura In-Ze, was a judge. Kryptonian society was divided into three "guilds": Science, Military, and Labor. She spoke of her maternal aunt, a general in the Military Guild, as well as her paternal uncle, Jor-El, who was one of Krypton's most brilliant scientists, and aunt, Lara Lor-Van. She then began to gush over her infant cousin, Kal-El, but she quickly trailed off. Detecting that there was something wrong, Sora asked what was bothering her.

"Where is Kal?" Kara asked.

Rosetta and Reeve exchanged glances, unsure how to respond. It occurred to them that, while she had been telling them about her home planet and her family, she had not explained how or why she had come to Destiny Islands. Now that she was showing concern for her cousin, and also had not addressed her parents in the same question, they realized that the answer was most likely not a charming one.

"Kara, sweetie, did something happen?" Rosetta asked. Kara's only response was a sniffle.

"Kara, why did you leave Krypton?" Reeve asked.

Tears welled in her eyes. She took a breath to stay calm while she told her story. "Jor-El found out that there was something wrong with our planet. I-I do not remember all the details. Something about how we were eating up too much of the planet's resources, and it had become unstable. Uncle Jor tried to warn the Science Council, but they refused to believe him. He could not save everyone on Krypton, and he only had enough time and resources to build two small rockets. Dad helped him put them together: one for Kal, and one for me. We were supposed to follow the same path and go to a new planet together before Krypton… Mom and Dad told me the plan. I wished it could be different, but Dad said it could not be avoided. Then… it happened. Mom, Dad, Uncle Jor, and Lara prepped the rockets for launch. Kal and I were in separate pods, but we were supposed to follow the same path and go to a new planet together." Kara was breathing heavily now, having difficulty in controlling her emotions. Tears were streaming down her face as she recounted the horrible experience of being separated from her family. "Krypton is gone! It's… My home is… It is gone. We… We got off the planet before… before… But then, my pod was knocked off course. I hit a rift, and I ended up in this weird space. I do not know how long I was there, but it felt like a really long time. After what felt like years, a portal somehow opened in front of me and my pod went through. Next thing I know, my pod was crashing in the ocean." At this point, Kara completely broke down, crying. Rosetta pulled her into a hug. "I was hoping that Kal would have landed here, too, but… but my pod was the only one that got here. Where is Kal? Oh, Rao, where is Kal? I was supposed to take care of him. I was supposed to protect him. Where is he?"

"Shh… It's okay, sweetie. It's okay," Rosetta whispered. However, she did not know how it could be okay. Kara had just lost her family and her entire planet, and the only family she had left, her infant cousin, was nowhere to be found.

It was then that, while they could not bring back her home planet or find her cousin, the Danvers clan decided that they would always be there for the little girl lost. Over the following days, adoption papers were drawn, and formalized to the best of social service's ability given that she effectively did not exist for the past eleven years, and Kara Danvers became an official member of the family.

* * *

Over the following weeks, Rosetta and Reeve brought Kara to see Riku's mother, Claire Malverne, for therapy sessions. Reeve also taught her about the islands' history and the history of the worlds, and Rosetta read some books to her. Kara was fascinated with the stories that they told. They gathered together with Sora, Riku and Kairi for regular movie nights, sometimes bringing Tidus, Wakka, Selphie, and Riku and Kairi's parents to watch with them. One night, Tidus suggested they watch _Star Wars Episode IV_, but Riku and Rosetta dissuaded him, pointing out that, with Kara's experience, it was probably a bad idea.

Kara was enrolled in Hopena Elementary School, where Reeve Danvers worked as principal, being placed in the same fifth-grade class as Sora and Kairi. At first, most of the kids and teachers found it amazing that they shared a classroom with an alien, but over time, they grew used to her, and they came to think of it as if she was just another kid in the class. She ran afoul of a few bullies, but Sora and Riku stood up for her. However, within a few months, that image was shaken once again as Kara and her friends came upon a startling discovery.

* * *

One day, while the kids were playing on the smaller island, Sora and Riku were engaged in another of their little contests. To prove his strength, Sora had begun to climb one of the palm trees with a thicker trunk, wrapping his arms and legs around the trunk, gripping the rough bark, and shimmying his way up. Kara and Kairi cheered him on as they watched, while Riku smirked, holding in his laughter as he was amused by the manner in which his friend climbed. Two thirds of the way up, he stopped to catch his breath, but then continued his climb. He reached the top, reaching his arm up and weaving it through the fronds to grab at the highest point he could reach, just as an extra jab to Riku. He released his grip with one hand and turned to wave to his friends. "Check me out!" he shouted. Kara and Kairi clapped and cheered, while Riku nodded and gave him a thumbs-up.

Sora heard a tear as the frond that he was holding onto began to rip from the crown. Before he could react and recover himself, the frond came free, and he lost his grip and began to fall. His friends gasped. Riku prepared to run over and try to help him, but Kara was faster. She ran to the base of the tree and caught Sora before he hit the ground.

Sora groaned. "Thanks, Kara," he said.

Kara set him down on his feet. "Are you okay?" she asked. Sora nodded. Turning back to Riku and Kairi, Sora grinned and rubbed the back of his head nervously. He and Kara then noticed that they were not looking at Sora with concern, nor were either of them prepared to scold Sora for his recklessness, but they were staring at Kara in shock. "What?" Kara asked, confused.

"How did you get there so fast?" Kairi asked. Kara tilted her head in confusion, but Sora realized what Kairi meant. While he was climbing the tree, Kara was standing next to Riku and Kairi, twenty-five feet away from the base. In the time that Sora fell, which was less than a second, Kara had closed the distance in time to catch him. If Riku had started running, he would have made it several seconds after Sora had hit the ground.

"How did I get there so fast?" Kara wondered.

* * *

Riku directed Kara to run across the beach and back as fast as she can, while Kairi kept time with a stopwatch. When Riku told her to go and Kairi started the stopwatch, Kara ran to the other end of the beach, turned around, and returned. Her friends saw her become a blur, and when Kairi hit stop, a full two seconds after she returned due to needing to regain her senses at seeing Kara move so fast, the watch read just over four and a half seconds—she made that run in two and a half seconds.

While Riku and Kairi tried to process what they had seen, Sora was excited. "Wow! My alien sister can run at super speed!" he declared in amazement.

"But… I couldn't run like that on Krypton," Kara said. "No one on my planet could."

"Hmm… I wonder if there's something about our world that gives you powers that you didn't have on Krypton," Riku mused.

"I wonder what else you can do now," Sora said, eager to find out the answer, not noticing Kara's apprehension and worry at what was happening to her.

Kara felt something bump against her leg and turned around to see that a volleyball had rolled over to them. "Hey, guys!" She and her friends turned to see Wakka waving to them from the back end of the shore. He had been playing with Tidus and Selphie all the while. "Could you throw the ball back, ya?" he asked.

"Sure," Kara replied. She picked the ball up, drew her arm back, and threw it. To the shock of her and everyone else, it sailed higher, farther, and faster than she expected. It flew over the elevated walkway on the fort and out of sight. The only indicator of its trajectory after that point was the crunching noise of breaking wood that resounded immediately after the ball was out of view. Kara, Sora, and Riku stared after it in utter shock. Kairi, Wakka, Tidus, and Selphie's jaws dropped. Riku ran to check out where the ball had gone, closely followed by Kara, Sora, and Kairi, and they were then joined by the other three kids.

"That's some arm, sista," Wakka remarked. The compliment did not calm Kara down. Not only had she not known she had that kind of strength, but she had no idea that she had put anywhere near that much force into it.

"Hey, did you see that weird blur a minute ago?" Tidus asked innocently as Riku and Kara began climbing.

There was a brief pause as Sora and Riku considered how they were going to answer the question, since they knew what the "blur" actually was. Finally, Riku simply responded "Yes" without elaborating further.

When everyone was up on the walkway, they stopped and stood in shock as they stared at the volleyball, which laid broken and deflated on the floor. Some of the boards that formed the wall on the tree trunk that the walkway wrapped around were broken and splintered, having been smashed by the same great force that had broken the volleyball.

"Man, brudda, what have your parents been feeding her?" Wakka quipped to Sora. "Can you do that? Have you been holding out on us, man?" Sora shook his head, denying the suggestion.

"Sorry," Kara said quietly, her head hanging low.

Sora put his hand on Kara's shoulder. "Don't worry. We'll talk to Mom and Dad, and we'll figure out what's going on," he assured her.

* * *

They recounted the incident to Reeve and Rosetta, and Kara demonstrated her newfound strength by lifting Reeve's pickup truck from the front. The adults consulted Dolores, who was a physician, and she suggested running a blood test to determine what was happening.

On the morning that the Danvers had scheduled with Dolores and her coworkers to have Kara's blood drawn, Reeve knocked on Kara's bedroom door and entered to wake her up, but he stopped as he was stunned by a bizarre sight. Kara did not lay on her bed, but rather she hovered two feet above it. Her blanket lay over her, the sides hanging limply off like a sheet ghost. Without waking Kara, Reeve brought Rosetta and Sora to see. A gasp in shock and amazement from Rosetta caused Kara to wake up with a jolt, at which point, she promptly dropped back onto the bed.

At the doctor's office, one of the doctors attempted to stick a syringe into Kara's arm, but the needle would not penetrate her skin, even bending as enough force was applied before the doctor gave up. The doctors checked her vitals, which seemed to be normal, then took a saliva sample and requested a urine sample for alternative testing.

When they returned home, it was clear that Kara was despondent and unsure of what to think in light of recent developments. Riku and Kairi stopped by to check on her. Rosetta told them what had happened that morning.

"What's happening to me? I can do these things that I shouldn't be able to," Kara muttered.

"Whatever this is, it won't change the person you are," Riku assured her.

"Riku's right," Sora agreed. "Besides, I think it's really cool that you're super strong and can fly." Kairi giggled and nodded, indicating that she felt the same about both points.

"But what if I can't control it? What if I hurt someone? What if I hurt you guys?" Kara asked.

"You won't hurt us. We believe in you," Kairi countered.

"We'll help you figure it out," Riku said. "You can learn to control your strength. You can learn to be fast and slow, strong and gentle."

Kara smiled and wiped a tear from her eye, glad that she had such great friends who would always stand steadfastly by her side.


	2. Dreaming of Other Worlds

**Chapter 2**

**Dreaming of Other Worlds**

"Ready? Go!"

On Kairi's cue, Sora and Riku shot to their feet and raced across the beach. Kairi and Kara watched as the boys ran nearly neck-in-neck, albeit with Riku just ahead of Sora. The boys switched between keeping their eyes on the finish marker and glancing at each other, offering a friendly and competitive grin. Sora pushed himself as fast as he could go, hoping to edge into the lead, but Riku had slightly longer legs and was just as agile as him. A few seconds before they reached the finish marker, they saw a blue and red blur blow past them, accompanied by a strong gust of wind. Faster than they could blink, Kara was standing past the marker, her hands on her hips and a mischievous smile on her face.

"Come on, Kara! No fair!" Riku complained after he passed the marker and came to a stop. Sora came to a stop immediately after and began laughing at Riku's expense.

It had been four years since Kara had arrived on the island, and in the time since discovering her powers, she had developed full control over her new abilities. Along with super strength, super speed, super durability, and flight, it was discovered that she could: see through walls; hear sounds that were very far off, very quiet, or on a pitch that most others could not register; fire heat blasts from her eyes; and breathe strong and also freezing cold winds (though she did not care to use that last one too much and thus was not very potent with the ability). Now, she was happy to participate in activities with her friends on a human level, but she was not above showing off her powers for fun.

"Sorry, Riku. Sometimes I just can't resist," Kara said with a laugh. The fifteen-year-old Kryptonian girl wore a white t-shirt, a red skirt over blue shorts secured by a blue belt with a yellow buckle, short socks, red running shoes with yellow laces, and a red headband that pushed her bangs up. A custom-made pin in the shape of the crest of her birth family, the House of El (the diamond with the "S" in it), was attached to her shirt next to her left shoulder.

"Man, lighten up. It's just a game, after all. Right, Riku?" Sora teased, jabbing Riku with the same line that he would throw at Sora when he would cheer triumphantly at beating Riku in a sparring match or a race. The fourteen-year-old boy wore a sleeveless red waterproof jumpsuit with puffy shorts and a zipper that ran all the way from the neckline to the crotch, a black short-sleeved hooded jacket with white sleeves ending in gray edging and a blue inner lining which he left unzipped, a blue belt with a grey buckle that he left loosely secured, yellow and black waterproof sneakers with grey soles and yellow belt straps, a pair of white fingerless gloves with blue straps around the palms secured by thin metal discs on the backs as well as black and yellow straps around the wrists, a chain necklace with a three-pointed crown-shaped pendant, and a chain with crown-shaped links that hung from his belt over his left leg. The chain was looped around a wooden toy sword, holding it at his hip like a makeshift scabbard. He was slightly taller than Kara, but, despite their vast difference in strength, had roughly the same musculature as her.

Riku scoffed. "Easy for you to say. You were gonna lose, anyway," he retorted. The fifteen-year-old boy wore a tank top that was yellow on the front and black on the back with white-trimmed black straps that wrapped over his shoulders and crossed at his chest and upper back. He also wore dark blue pants secured by a black belt with a silver rectangular buckle, a lighter blue baggy set of chaps that were held up with white-studded suspenders hooked to the belt and secured around his ankles with small black belts. His white-and-blue shoes had white-trimmed black horizontal straps, gray soles, and yellow strings on the inner sides. He also sported a pair of black gloves with matching black wristbands. He was visibly more muscular than Sora, and he was a few inches taller than him as well.

"Okay. Calm down, you two," Kairi said, giggling. The fourteen-year-old girl wore a white top with purple shoulder straps over a black tank top, both of which slightly exposed her navel, purple bike shorts underneath a lighter purple skirt, a blue belt, white-and-purple slip-on shoes with white elastic strings at the top secured by a black ball that managed tightness, a black choker, a yellow wristband and a purple armband on her left arm, a pair of bracelets on her right wrist, and a string necklace with a silver bead attached. She was slightly shorter than Kara, and was not as well-built as either her or Sora, due to a comparative lack of interest in sparring.

Kairi reached into her duffel bag and took out a sheet of paper, on which were written a list of materials, then pulled an 11"x17" paper from Riku's duffel bag, on which was drawn a schematic of a traditional sailing boat. Riku took the schematic and laid it out on the sand.

"Do we have all the supplies we'll need for today?" Riku asked.

Kairi nodded. "I brought the cloth," she said.

"Sora and I brought the logs and boards," Kara added.

"She carried them and flew. I mostly talked to the guys and supervised," Sora admitted.

"We all do what we can," Kairi assured him, adding a giggle.

Riku nodded. "And I brought the rope and twine, and the tools." He opened his duffel bag up to show the materials and the toolbox to his friends.

"Okay! Let's get to work!" Kairi said energetically.

Sora yawned. "Hey, Kara, can you hand me my…" He did not need to finish his request, as Kara took a thermos out of his bag and passed it over to him. He removed the lid, poured coffee into it, and drank. He let out a satisfied sigh before putting the lid back on and handing the thermos back to Kara.

"Will you be able to keep up today?" Riku asked. He recalled how, a few days ago, Sora had become so exhausted while helping out that he had laid down for a nap when he had gone to talk to Tidus, Wakka and Selphie.

"I'll be fine. Thanks," Sora assured his friend. He had dealt with people calling him a "lazy bum" for a few years due to the number of naps he would take However, doctors determined that his mental processes simply run unusually fast, so he wears himself out mentally faster than usual. The caffeine and sugar are not a perfect solution, but they keep him awake well enough when he drinks enough coffee and cannot sneak away for a nap.

"Well, what are we waiting for?" Kairi asked. "Let's get to work!"

The four teens passed through a small tunnel in the rock to the other side of the island, where they had been building their boat. They were still in the early stages, and it was little more than a skeleton of the Wayfinder sailing boat that their design was emulating. Two piles of long logs and boards sat several feet away, each set wrapped up in tape and rope. Riku brought out his tools, including a hand saw, measuring tape, and a knife. Kairi unrolled one of the sheets of cloth that she brought, then pulled out a marker with which to measure the size they would need to cut. Riku and Kara measured and cut the logs while Kairi cut pieces of cloth and Sora tied the logs together and into place. When all of the logs had been cut for that period of time, Kara sanded the edges to eliminate risk of splinters and helped Sora put them together.

After a few hours of working, they took a lunch break and went back to the other side of the island to chat with Tidus, Wakka and Selphie. After lunch, Sora sparred with Tidus, clashing his toy sword with Tidus' wooden stick, while Riku sparred with Wakka, wielding his toy sword and hitting Wakka's volleyball back when the latter threw it. While they had their dueling rounds, Kara, Kairi and Selphie played together using Selphie's jump rope. After those matches ended, Sora, Riku and Kara rotated: Kara picking up a stick and dueling with Tidus, fighting at his level of strength and rolling with the hits that he did land so that she did not make unfair use of her durability; Sora going up against Wakka; and Riku challenging Selphie, who carried and swung her jump rope like a mix between a whip and a nunchaku, all while Kairi simply watched. They rotated again, and Kara and Wakka bounced his volleyball back and forth, Sora went up against Selphie, and Riku crossed swords with Tidus. Afterwards, the four teens went back to working on the boat until sunset.

"I'll take the tools back for you," Kara offered. "Might as well save you the hassle." She hoisted Riku's bag over her shoulder. "I'll be back in a minute." She leapt into the air, flying over the trees and straight to the main island.

"And I'll put the materials in a safe place," Kairi said. She carried the unused cloth and rope off to do just that.

Sora grinned and crossed his hands behind his head as he watched her work on the clean-up for the day. His focus was drawn away as he felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned to see Riku pointing his toy sword at him.

"How about a quick round?" the silver-haired boy challenged.

Sora drew his sword from his chain loop and deflected Riku's in a single motion. "You're on!" He planted his feet down firmly and held his sword out to the side with both hands.

Riku smirked. He separated his legs into a firm stance. He drew his right arm back and up, pointing his sword at Sora, and extended his free arm toward his rival in a daring manner. "This one decides the champion."

He lunged forward, slashing his sword. Sora brought his sword up to block the strike, then swung overhead to strike Riku while he was recoiling. He went for another hit, swinging his sword like a club in a swift yet forceful motion, but Riku blocked it and knocked Sora back with a spinning attack. They clashed swords a few times, each of them getting some good hits in, before Riku jumped backward, putting distance between him and Sora.

Standing his ground, he held his sword horizontally in front of his chest. Although it appeared as though he had an opening, Sora did not move in for the attack, instead waiting for Riku to make his next move so he could respond. "What are you afraid of?" Riku taunted, beckoning him to attack. Although he knew that he was goading him, Sora still charged in and attacked, hoping that he would be able to overcome or effectively dodge the counterattack trap. However, Riku smirked as he read Sora's movements and pushed back, then retaliated with a spinning attack while he had been staggered. Sora quickly recovered and delivered a combo to Riku, dealing a finisher strong enough to knock him on his back. In his excitement, he ran to follow up on the attack while he was down. Riku expected this. As soon as he hit the ground, he drew his legs up to his chest and pressed his hands to the ground where his head was. He leaned back further, then pushed off with his hands and shot his legs forward, launching himself at Sora. Before Sora could react and get out of the way, Riku flew at him feet-first, kicking him in the chest and sending him tumbling backward.

Sora attempted to push himself back up, but he felt an ache in his ribs and slumped back down in defeat.

Riku offered his hand and helped Sora to his feet. "Good match," he said.

Sora grinned. "Thanks. Right back at you." He heard a giggle and turned to see that Kairi and Kara were standing off to the side, having watched their duel. Kara stepped over and handed him a Potion, for which he thanked her and which he downed in a gulp. As the liquid flowed through his system, he felt his aching and pain fade away, and he stood tall, revitalized.

"As advanced as my planet's technology was, the medicine provided on this world still amazes me," Kara remarked. She wished that Krypton had been able to develop a drink that could heal cuts and bruises with just a sip.

"Come on. We should head on back," Kairi said.

Sora and Riku nodded. Sora rubbed his belly as his stomach growled. "I wonder what Mom and Dad are making for dinner tonight?" he mused.

They went back to the western side of the island, Kairi and Kara going through the tunnel ahead of Riku and Sora. When they came out of the tunnel, the girls kept going, but Riku stopped and climbed up onto the elevated platform that the girls were walking around. Sora stopped and watched him in confusion as he ran across the bridge that connected to the platform and another platform out in the shallow water, which was built on a cylindrical pile of stones and filled to the top with sand and on which grew coconut trees and a tree that extended horizontally over the edge of the platform. Sora lost sight of Riku when he stepped onto the platform, and waited a minute for him to reappear on the bridge.

"Hey, Sora!" Riku called down. He tossed a yellow star-shaped fruit, which had leaves sticking out of three of the points, off of the bridge. Sora caught it on reflex and regarded it with confusion.

"A Paopu Fruit?" Sora stared at the fruit that had grown on the sideways tree, wondering what Riku was expecting him to do with it.

"If two people share one, their destinies become intertwined. They'll remain a part of each other's lives, no matter what," Riku said, reciting the island's old legend. He took a quick glance backward in Kairi's direction, then smirked back down at Sora and chuckled. "Come on. I know you want to try it!" he teased.

"W-What are you…" Sora stammered in embarrassment. He looked up at Riku, who laughed at the flabbergasted expression on his face, back down at the fruit, across the beach toward Kairi, then back down at the fruit again. Riku dropped off of the other side of the bridge and walked to the stretch of pier where the girls were already waiting by the rowboats. Awkwardly, Sora tossed the fruit aside, letting it land in the water and get washed away by the tide. He crossed the beach to the rowboats, trying to put on a straight face so no one else would realize that anything happened.

* * *

They returned to Hopena in their rowboats, Sora and Kara going together and Riku and Kairi going separately, then went back home and had dinner with their parents. An hour after dinner, Sora and Kara stepped out onto the balcony outside of Kara's bedroom window, where a telescope had been set up so that Kara could observe the stars.

"We're gonna head to the watchtower!" Sora shouted down to his parents.

"Okay. Take care!" Rosetta called back.

Sora and Kara nodded to each other. Sora wrapped his arm over Kara's shoulder while Kara looped her arm behind his back. Kara lightly pushed herself off of the ground and hovered a few inches above the floor. Sora felt his feet leave the floor as well. Kara ascended until she and Sora were floating higher than roof of their two-story-plus-an-attic house. Turning to face east, she flew over the neighborhood, the duo's velocity and the air resistance causing them to take a horizontal position. Sora grinned as he felt the wind whip his face. Flying with Kara was always an exhilarating experience.

They soon approached a three-story stone tower which could be ascended via a ladder. At the top of the structure, a skeletal wooden frame was built above it, elevating to extra levels which could be scaled by way of a ladder in the very center. The three levels of the watchtower were utilized long ago to watch for ships coming into port, but had long since been abandoned. Over time, it became a site where teenagers would hang out and watch the waves ebb and flow.

Riku and Kairi were already there, sitting on the top floor, both leaning against the safety railing. Riku stared up at the stars while Kairi faced land, watching the skies for when Sora and Kara would arrive. When she saw them, she giggled and waved, at the same time letting Riku know that they had come. Once they were above the tower, Kara lowered herself and Sora down, landing gently on the platform. They separated and walked over to the edge of the tower next to Riku and Kairi.

"All of those stars up there, each one is another world. A piece of a fractured whole," Riku mused, recalling the old stories of the worlds.

"What could have happened to this planet to divide its regions like this?" Kara wondered. "Towns, cities, countries, separated from each other by an entire sector of space."

"I've heard many stories, but I don't know if any of them are the truth," Kairi added.

"Whatever happened in the past, this is what it's like now. So many worlds, just waiting to be explored. What would it be like to see them all?" Riku continued. "What would we find?"

"I wonder if we'll find the world Kairi came from," Sora said. Kairi sighed, musing about how she had been found barely conscious on the beach of Hopena nine years ago, as if she had washed ashore (and newspaper reports which made sure to point out the indentations in the sand around her indicated that she had done exactly that). It was determined that she most likely came from another world, but she could remember nothing from before her arrival. She wondered what was out there, where she had come from, as well, possibly even more than Riku and Sora, but she was also apprehensive of the idea. She became more accepting of the idea of being an "outsider" when Kara appeared, and she developed a kinship with the alien, even if she had no stories of her past life to tell.

"Could be. Maybe we'll see what it's like," Riku replied. "And maybe on one of those worlds, we'll find where Kara's cousin really ended up."

A tear rolled down Kara's face as she thought of her lost infant cousin. She was supposed to protect and raise him, but events beyond her control caused them to become separated, and Kal-El was nowhere to be found. Riku's suggestion that he had simply landed on another world gave her hope that he might still be alright.

"Could we really do it?" Sora asked. "The Wayfinder boats haven't been used in a long time. How far would it actually take us?"

Riku slumped, realizing that Sora was right. The plan was a long shot. The use of Wayfinder boats had been phased out over a century ago, and there was no one alive who could teach them to sail the dark sea between the worlds, only in local waters, so they would have to prepare all on their own. The ferries were a more reliable method of transport, but they would not be ideal for getting where he wanted to go. Plus, they would all have to save up money for the fare on each trip, which was not a part of his plan. With their own boat, they would be able to go where they wished, free as the wind… assuming that it worked.

He sighed. "I wish we could make a plan that's more reliable. But…"

Kara frowned and looked at him sympathetically. "But we can't use my pod," she reminded him. "It might be able to soar through the space between worlds without damage, but it's only for one person, and we won't be able to refit it or its technology for the four of us with this island's resources."

Riku shook his head. "I know. I just… I really want this to work. I want to go to the other worlds, see what's beyond this island."

"Well, suppose it did work, and we did make it to another world," Kairi chimed, hoping to cheer Riku up with some of her endless optimism. "What would you do there?"

Riku pondered the question, then shrugged. "Well, I haven't really thought about it," he admitted. "It's just... I've always wondered why we're here on this island. I look up at the stars, and I think that ours is just a little piece of something much greater. So we could've just as easily ended up somewhere else, right?"

Sora shrugged. "I dunno."

"And Kara especially," Riku added. "She flew across the universe and landed on this island. Out of probably hundreds of worlds, and that's not even counting all of the other planets that she could have landed on, she lands here. That's why we need to go out there and find out. Just sitting here won't change a thing. It's the same old stuff. So let's go."

Kara smiled softly. "You've been thinking a lot about this, haven't you?" she asked, admiring his dedication.

Riku smiled. "Thanks to you, and Kairi. If you hadn't come here, I probably would've never thought of any of this." He turned to Kairi, then Kara. "Thank you."

Kairi giggled. "You're welcome."

Sora turned so that he could lean back against the railing and crossed his hands behind his head. "I'd like to see where Kairi came from, too. Along with any other worlds we can reach. I wanna to see 'em all!"

Kara looked at him, and he met her gaze. "Me too. I want to see what the other worlds of this planet have to offer. I want to experience their beauty and wonder." She sighed wistfully. "But most of all, I want to see Kal-El again. I want to be able to hold him in my arms and never let go."

Sora stepped over to her and wrapped his arm over her shoulder. "I'd like to meet him, too," he said.

* * *

The following day, they did some more work on constructing the boat. After lunch, they divided tasks. Riku and Kairi stayed to test and make sure the base of the boat would be secure, while Sora and Kara went around the island to gather provisions, both so that the group would have a stockpile of their own foodstuffs for the journey and to practice in gathering them should they wind up in a place where they would need to do just that.

Kara used her powers for the more difficult or dangerous tasks. She flew up above the trees and collected seagull eggs from one of the palm trees. She also collected coconuts, punching trees to shake them loose and trusting her invulnerability to protect her from the falling shells while Sora stood at a safe distance. They filled bottles up with water from the spring up against the rock wall. Sora swam through the shallow water and caught some fish by hand, then brought them back to shore and dropped them in a bowl that Kara had filled with seawater. Lastly, they split up to forage for vegetables and mushrooms from around the island.

"Hey, Kara." Kara paused in clipping berries off of a bush and turned to see Riku calling out to her. She dropped the berries into the pouch that she was carrying around and approached him and Kairi.

"Hey. Is something the matter?" Kara asked.

"Can you give us a hand with this?" Riku held up a frayed end of rope, and Kara immediately knew what he wanted her to do, having done it a few times in the past. She pinched the frayed ends and used Riku's knife to cut the ends off. She then twisted the new end tight, and Riku wrapped twine around it. When he was finished, Kara took the rope out of his hand and focused her heat vision on the end of the rope. She had gotten control over her special vision powers to the point where she could use her x-ray vision on several different levels and adjust the focus and power of her heat vision. She stared at the rope with such a low power that the only indication that she was using her power was a shimmer in the air between her eyes and the rope, rather than the red lasers that normally appear, and the rope melted as if it were held over a small flame.

"Thanks," Riku said. He blew on the rope to cool it down, then went back to tying the boat together.

After a minute of continued work, Kairi noticed that Kara was still sitting there, staring at the boat. "Are you alright, Kara?" she asked.

Kara blinked and turned to address her. She shrugged. "I'm… apprehensive, I guess," she admitted. "Whenever I look up at the stars, I think about how Krypton isn't among them. And at the thought of leaving this world for another one, I think of the day of Krypton's destruction, when I was sent off in the pod, even though I guess in this case it's more like taking the aircar from Kryptonopolis to Argo City than flying to another planet altogether. But I lost everything that day. And now, I'm kind of worried that if I go, I could lose the home and family I have now."

Kairi nodded, understanding the alien's concerns. "Do you not want to leave?" she asked.

Kara thought for a moment, then shook her head. "No. I want to see what else is out there, and I want to do it with you guys. But I'm kind of afraid of what might happen."

Kairi frowned, empathetic. "I've actually been thinking the same thing. All my life, for literally as long as I can remember, I've been just as much an alien as you, but I don't even remember where I'm from. I don't know what my old home was like, and I don't know why I was brought here. Because of that… I'm afraid that I might get lost again, and I might not be able to find you guys again. I might not even remember any of you."

While his friends expressed their fears and concerns, Riku listened intently. He understood why they were worried, and he felt guilty. He was the one who roped Kara, Kairi, and Sora into his plan to travel to other worlds. He knew that Sora was almost entirely just along for the ride, but he had not thought of how the girls might be conflicted. He did not want them to be afraid that they would lose the people and things they cared about.

He climbed off of the boat and walked over to them. "Don't worry. None of us will get lost," he assured them.

"How can you be sure?" Kara asked.

Riku smiled and shook his head. "I won't let that happen. We'll stick together through thick and thin." He wrapped his hand over Kara's and gave it a comforting squeeze.

Kara smiled softly. She felt better now. "Thanks, Riku."

* * *

Sora pushed through the vines and leaves covering the cave entrance and entered the cavern that was cut into the rock wall. He placed his hand on the wall to guide him along the winding path, so that he did not walk straight into rock on his way through the pitch black tunnel. Soon, he saw a faint light and stepped out into a round chamber, which he and his friends had called "The Secret Place". The mountain was broken open at the top, allowing sunlight to shine down through the hole high above Sora. Due to occasional heavy rainstorms and monsoons, which poured massive amounts of water into the hole in the roof, some trees had grown in the soil, even managing to rise over ten feet up, but due to large gaps between such storms and normal rainfall being insufficient for their location and size, the trees began to grow weak and die after some time, leaving only some small plants and fungi. The most unusual feature, which none of them had been able to understand as kids, was a wooden board mounted vertically at the back of the cave, which had a yellow outline around the edge with a design at the top. It very closely resembled a door, but there was no doorknob, nor were there any apparent hinges, so they were not sure how it was supposed to be opened, and the mystery spooked them enough to never try.

The walls were covered with chalk drawings, which Sora, Riku, Kairi, Tidus, Wakka, and Selphie had made when they were kids. They had largely outgrown it by the time Sora was eight, but some time after Kara arrived, they brought her in so that she could see their past work and add some cave art of her own.

Sora could not help but smile as he looked around at all of the drawings, basking in the nostalgia. Among the drawings were dragons, wizards, rocket ships, one of those strange otherworldly creatures called "Chocobos", and caricatures of the islanders as kids. Kara had found some empty space to draw what had come to her mind: images of Krypton, her family's crest, a sketch of her family's robot servant Kel-Ex, and the cityscape from her favorite movie on Destiny Islands, _The Wizard of Oz_. He gave a light chuckle as he reflected on everyone's wild imaginations as children, then returned to his business.

A few feet to the right of the door, Sora saw some mushrooms against the wall. He crouched in front of them and began to pick them and put them in his pouch. When he collected the last of them, he looked up, and his eyes fell on a particular drawing.

_Sora and Kairi, age five, knelt at the wall, scratching rocks against the stone surface. When they finished their respective drawings, they looked at each other's work. Kairi had drawn a fully-colored-in profile of Sora's head, while Sora had drawn a more scribbled take on Kairi's head in profile. After a few months acclimating to the new environment after arriving on the island, Kairi had been insecure about being the outsider in a place that she feared she did not belong. Sora brought her to the small island and into the Secret Place so that they could mark each other on the walls decorated with the children's hearts and minds, so he could assure her and she could assure herself that whatever happened, whatever their destinies held, they would always be the closest of friends, and that she had nothing to be afraid of. They laughed, both feeling that everything will be just fine._

Sora picked up a rock and began scratching a new drawing between the heads. When he finished, he took a moment to stop and study the art, an arm passing a star from Sora's head to Kairi's head. He smiled, considering the prospect, but frowned as he wondered if Kairi would actually feel the same.

Hearing footsteps echo from the entrance tunnel, Sora stood up quickly and positioned himself so that his legs blocked the drawing. Facing the entrance, he waited until the newcomer came into view, and saw that it was Kara.

"Oh, hey," Kara said when she realized that he was in the cave as well.

"Hey," Sora greeted with a wave. He stooped down to pick his pouch up. "I was just getting some mushrooms."

Kara nodded in comprehension. "I can see that." She stepped further into the cavern and looked around at all of the cave drawings. "This place really is special, isn't it?"

"Sure is," Sora replied.

"I know I didn't make as many memories in here as you, Riku and Kairi, but this place holds a place in my heart." Kara looked up, squinting in the light, and spun around until she found a specific drawing on the ceiling. It depicted the House of El symbol side-by-side with a sketch of the crown shape of Sora's pendant. She pointed up at the drawing. "That one is my favorite."

Sora crossed his arms and nodded in agreement. "Yeah. That's where we marked our bond as brother and sister," he recalled. Shortly after Kara had been adopted, she and Sora had gone to the Secret Place to mark the occasion. Kara had flown up to the ceiling with him to mark their personal sigils.

Kara turned to her brother. "You know, anything could happen out in the worlds," she mused.

"Yeah. But everything on these walls, every drawing, every memory, is permanent," Sora asserted. "None of this, and particularly not this…" he placed his hand over his heart to emphasize what he was referring to "…will ever change."

Kara smiled and nodded. "You're right. Thanks." She went over and hugged him, and Sora returned the embrace.

Kara noticed something in her lower peripheral and glanced down, seeing that there was something different about a certain drawing. She separated from the hug and shifted around him to take a peek. "Isn't that the drawing you and Kairi did of each other?"

Sora blushed at the comment. Realizing that he could not hide it, he stepped aside to let Kara take a look. She looked down at the drawing to see what had been added to it. "Huh. Is that…" Her face lit up as she realized what it was. "Is that you sharing a Paopu Fruit with Kairi?" she asked, delighted. She turned to Sora and, seeing that his cheeks were now a bright red, determined that it was exactly that. She grinned. "Aw, that's so sweet." She then began to laugh at his blushing face. Sora gave her a playful punch on the arm, then started laughing too.

Suddenly, Sora felt his hairs stand on end. Sensing a presence, he stopped laughing and spun around to face the intruder. Kara looked at him in confusion, wondering what was wrong, then peeked past him and saw a bizarre figure. _Where did he come from? How did I not hear him come in?_ she asked herself.

The newcomer was like no one that either of them had ever seen before. He had a masculine figure, but that was all that could be determined about him at a glance. His entire body was covered, head to toe, in bandages, making him look very much like a mummy. He stood in the shadows back against the wall, and there was also an odd ghostly aura about him, making him seem like some kind of phantom.

"Wh-Who's there?" Sora asked, the fear in his voice.

"I've come to see the door to this world," the stranger said. His voice was deep and gravelly. Although there was no obvious menace in his tone, it still creeped the teens out.

"Huh?" Sora was confused by what the man was saying. He traded glances with Kara, but she was just as confused, and they both shrugged before turning their attention back to the stranger.

"This world has been connected," the stranger continued. "Tied to the darkness. Soon to be completely… eclipsed."

"What are you talking about? Who are you? Where did you come from?" Sora asked, becoming more freaked out by the second.

"Those are not the questions that should be asked. This world, this door, they hold many secrets. Even more than the others

"You're not from around here, are you?" Kara guessed. "You're not from this world."

"No more than you are, child," the stranger replied. Kara blanched. _What does this creep know about me?_

"I must ask, what is it about this world? What would bring you here?" the stranger continued. "What secrets hide here?"

Sora and Kara looked over at the door, wondering if there was really anything so special about it, and what would pique the ominous man's interests so much. When they turned their gaze back to where he stood, however, he had vanished, much to their bewilderment.

"Where'd he go?" Sora asked in disbelief.

"We should have heard him if he walked out," Kara muttered. She stepped into the center of the cave, then launched herself into the air, hoping to find the escaping stranger. Sora stumbled briefly as the ground shook under his feet. Kara scanned the island with her x-ray vision and listened for any sign of the man, but she found nothing. She dropped back into the cave on a three-point landing and, facing Sora, shook her head.

"I don't get it. It's like he was never here in the first place," she remarked.

Sora shrugged. "I dunno. Maybe we should tell Riku and Kairi about it," he suggested.

Kara nodded in agreement, and they left the Secret Place together.


	3. The King's Mission

**Chapter 3**

**The King's Mission**

The Disney Town marching band signaled the morning with the club march. Bipedal and fully-clothed cows, dogs, pigs, and chickens marched around the town populated by anthropomorphic animals (colloquially known as "Toonimals") and played their song, heedless of the late sleepers who threw shoes and whatever else was on hand to try and silence them.

Within the walls of the castle, whose outer gates sat at the edge of the town square, the music that carried over was a delightful tune that prepared its residents, almost all of whom were bright-eyed and bushy-tailed even if their tails were not the bushy kind, for a new day. Knights trained in the barracks and prepared for their patrols. The castle's servants, brooms that were brought to life by magic, carried out their chores. The engineers ran diagnostics on the machinery that had been installed throughout the castle and the town.

Donald Duck marched through the colonnade that looked out over the garden on his way to the audience chamber to meet with the king. As his name indicated, he was an anthropomorphic duck with white plumage and a yellow-orange bill and webbed feet of the same color, and he had human-like arms with four-fingered hands instead of wings. His eyes had pale blue-tinted sclerae and blue irises. He wore a long navy jacket with long sweater-like sleeves, two large yellow buttons on the chest, a blue belt tied around the waist, and a gold-lined pattern of ovals partially fused into the bottom edge, and which also sported a blue section underneath that covered more of the lower half of his body, although he lacked pants. Over top of the jacket was what appeared to be the top half of a loose-sleeved shirt with a turtleneck collar, which had gold trim, and two loose flaps on the front, each of which had a zipper that appeared to serve no real function. On his head, marking him as the castle's Court Magician, he wore a violet-blue witch's hat with a gold trim around the edge of the brim and a brown belt on the cone just above the brim, and whose tip curled all over the place in an angular fashion.

He passed a line of six magic brooms, each of which had thin wooden arms that stuck out of their sides and walked on straw bristles that had been grouped into two "legs", and which were each carrying two buckets full of water. Donald tipped his hat to them politely as they crossed paths. He stopped in the middle of the hallway and turned to face a massive set of lavender-colored double doors. He rapped his knuckles on the door, and a normal-sized door panel opened up, revealing the enormous design to be fake for the sake of aesthetics and fooling ill-prepared intruders. With the way open, he walked into the audience chamber.

The Audience Chamber was a massive hall made with the same white limestone that comprised the structure of the rest of the castle, and it was lined with columns on either side. A red carpet with yellow trim was rolled out down the center up to the blue square platform on which the throne sat. Against the rear wall, on either side of the throne, there were two tall statues: one was a duck dressed in a traditional wizard's robe and which held a wooden staff, with a conical hat lowered over his head to the point where it covered his eyes; the other was a tall dog donning archaic knight's armor and wielding a shield in his left hand. A large red banner with orange trim hung from the ceiling, slightly wider than the throne platform. It was marked with a black sigil made from a circle and two ovals placed in diagonal positions at the top of the circle: the town's residents recognized the shape as the general shape of a Toonimal Mouse's head, and it was also coincidentally an emblem of ancient origin which had been adopted as the symbol of Disney Castle due to its uncanny resemblance to the head shape of the royal family. The same symbol could also be seen in three places on the wall behind the throne, as well as at the top of the throne's back.

"Good morning, your Majesty," Donald spoke in a semi-intelligible warble as he addressed his king, Mickey Mouse. His eyes were closed as he marched up whimsically. "It's nice to see you this morn—" He opened his eyes and noticed that the golden throne was bare. "What?!" King Mickey was always there to receive the morning report. If he had had other matters to attend to, he would have sent a message with his dog, Pluto. Could something have happened to him?

Just then, Pluto, a yellow-furred bloodhound who was of a species of canine that had not evolved into Toonimals, poked his head out from behind the throne. In his mouth, he held an envelope closed with the king's seal (again, resembling his own head). Curious, Donald took it from Pluto, petting the dog's head as he opened it and read the letter that was inside. As he absorbed the message, he burst into a panic and ran out, screaming at the top of his lungs, without even reading the postscript.

He ran out into the garden, which was filled with a variety of topiaries, many of which were trimmed to resemble Toonimals in the marching band. In the center was a hedge castle that also doubled as the entrance to a spiral staircase that led underground. He found the person he was looking for as the latter napped on the flower bed surrounding the hedge castle.

The snoozing figure was a tall anthropomorphic dog with black fur that covered his entire body save for his snout, exposing Caucasian skin, and grey eyes. Like all Toonimals, he had four fingers on each hand. He was dressed in knight's armor consisting of a sleeveless orange leather armor shirt, baggy pants of the same color and material with black kneepads that had yellow trim, a large metal belt with two blue straps that wrapped around the back, a blue piece of clothing that covered his left side and was strapped around his right side, metal armlets on his upper arms, a pauldron and gauntlet, both made of metal, on his left arm, a white rubber glove on his right hand, metal shoes that curled upward at the pointed tips, and a metal hat that resembled a medieval knight's helmet and had a curved blade for the crest. His right shoulder and forearm were uncovered, but that had never bothered him in the past as it was also the arm in which he held his shield, his primary weapon.

The figure was Goofy Goof, the captain of the Royal Knights of Disney Castle. Oftentimes, he would spend his mornings helping the other knights with their routine and giving them their tasks, but they had developed into a well-oiled machine under his leadership that he was able to take some mornings to relax. Donald would often scold him for this, as he feared that one of those "lazy mornings" would be the calm before the storm.

"Wake up, Goofy! Wake up! This is serious!" Donald shouted to his friend as he ran up to him. However, Goofy did not stir, snoring as he slept soundly. Donald scowled. He did not have time for this. He pointed one finger into the air and let out a scream. At his angry call, a bolt of magic lightning fell from the sky and hit Goofy. The knight screamed in pain as he was jolted awake.

After the lightning vanished, Goofy sat up. He looked around groggily. When he saw the wizard, he waved. "Hey there, Donald. G'morning," he greeted.

"We've got a problem, Goofy!" Donald exclaimed. He glanced around shiftily, leaned in and whispered. "But don't tell anyone."

Goofy blinked. "Queen Minnie?"

Donald shook his head. "Not even the queen!" He knew how much she would worry if she heard about it, and wanted to figure out how to proceed before getting her involved.

"Daisy?"

"No! It's top secret!" Donald insisted. He definitely did not want to deal with Daisy's reaction, and there was also the fact that, as Queen Minnie's lady-in-waiting, she would certainly pass the news onto her, which would lead back to the queen worrying.

Goofy leaned to the side and waved to something far behind Donald. "G'morning, ladies!"

"What?" Donald slowly turned around until he saw Queen Minnie Mouse and Daisy Duck. Minnie, as her surname suggested, was a Toonimal mouse with black fur that left the Caucasian skin on her face bare, long eyelashes, and two large, round ears on top of her head. She wore an elegant pink, salmon, and red-colored ball gown with floral patterns around the bottom and a large, red bow on the back, a pair of white opera gloves, a silver ring on her right index finger, and a gold tiara with an inset ruby shaped like her family crest. Daisy was a Toonimal duck of the same colors as Donald. She wore lavender eye shadow and had long eyelashes. She wore an ornate, sleeveless, violet and amethyst-colored ball gown with a high collar and a pleated purple layer underneath that was visible from the front, and she also wore long white gloves and a gold tiara with a sapphire set into the front.

Donald chuckled nervously. Daisy put her hands on her hips and glared, not amused that there seemed to be something of importance that he was planning to keep from her. Minnie was more patient, however, and wanted to know what the hubbub was about. "Is something the matter, Donald?" the queen asked as she approached the wizard.

Donald scratched the back of his head, then decided to just come out with it. He held the letter and envelope out for Minnie to see. She reached out to take it, but stopped as she saw the gardeners enter the courtyard.

"Perhaps we should continue this somewhere more private," she suggested. Donald nodded in agreement. Minnie beckoned for Goofy to accompany them. The four of them exited the garden and walked to the library at the opposite end of the hall. They were joined along the way by Pluto, who curled up in his bed when they entered.

The wall opposite from the entrance was lined with bookshelves. To the left, in front of a set of windows, there was a desk where Minnie, Mickey, Donald, Daisy, and others, would study. A fireplace and chimney were built into the opposite wall. Flanking the door were paintings of Minnie and Mickey's respective grandfathers. The entire room was illuminated by sunlight that streamed through the pyramid-shaped skylight.

Donald offered the letter to Minnie. "Pluto had this when I went into the Audience Chamber. The king was nowhere to be seen," he explained solemnly.

Minnie nodded in understanding and unfolded the parchment so that she could read the message inscribed. She replicated her husband's verbal mannerisms as best she could for authenticity.

"Donald,

Sorry to rush off without sayin' good-bye, but there's trouble brewin'. Not sure why, but the stars have been blinkin' out, one by one. And that means disaster can't be far behind. I hate to leave you all but I've gotta go check into it. I have a theory that I need to look into to figure it out, but I can't fix it alone. There's someone with a 'key'—_the_ key of light. It's the key to our survival. So I need you and Goofy to find him, and stick with him. Got it? We need that key or we're doomed! So go to Traverse Town and find Squall Leonhart. He'll point you in the right direction.

P.S. Would ya apologize to Minnie for me?"

Beneath the postscript, the kingdom's sigil was printed as a signature. Minnie sighed sadly, causing Daisy to pat her on the shoulder comfortingly.

"Oh, dear. What could this mean?" Daisy wondered aloud, worried about the events described in the letter.

"It means… we'll just have to trust the king," Minnie said resolutely, straightening her posture and putting on a calm expression.

"Gawrsh. What do you think he means by a 'key'?" Goofy asked, confused by the wording.

Donald crossed his arms and tapped his foot as he contemplated what it could mean. "Maybe it's special, different from the other keys," he suggested. "Like, it can do something that the others can't. Not even the king's."

"If so, then it is of the utmost importance that this 'key' and the one who possesses it are located," Minnie declared. "His instructions said to go to Traverse Town. Then that is where you must go. We must prepare you for the journey ahead."

"Traverse Town… I've heard of that place," Donald mused. "That's where the triplets set up their shop!"

"A-hyuck! Yeah. You can visit your nephews when you get there!" Goofy cheered.

Donald glared up at the knight. "Hey, whaddya mean by that?! You're coming, too!"

Goofy blinked in surprise. The letter had only specified Donald. But he supposed that it was only right for King Mickey's most loyal subject to go on the quest as well. He smiled and nodded in agreement.

Donald turned back to Queen Minnie. "I'll tell the engineers to prepare the ship, and I'll work on gathering supplies."

Goofy saluted. "I'll put O'Hara in charge of the knights while we're away."

"I'll compile everything we know about Traverse Town, and anything about the other worlds that might be helpful," Daisy said.

"And I'll look through Mickey's notes to see if he left behind anything that might be of help," Minnie added. "We will spend today in preparing you for your journey, and you will set off in the morning."

* * *

The following morning, they reconvened in the library.

"Is everything ready?" Minnie asked. Donald and Goofy nodded.

"Your Highness, don't worry. We'll find the king and this 'key of light'," Donald promised.

"Gawrsh, I sure hope he's alright," Goofy said worriedly.

Minnie smiled and nodded. "Thank you, both of you."

"Daisy, can you take care of the—"

"Of course," Daisy agreed before Donald could even finish his request. She knew the drill. Whenever Donald would leave to assist King Mickey on a mission, he would leave her to cover his usual duties, which involved minding the astrological symbols and alignments, making sure that the collection of mystical artifacts was secure, and reading the magical energies in and beyond the world they lived on. It occurred to her that studying signals that they had not heeded before and aligning them to the present context would be paramount to analyzing the situation properly. She wondered if Mickey had noticed something that Donald had not been aware of and through that was able to determine the danger, or if he possessed prior knowledge of another pattern that no one else would have had access to. "You be careful now. Both of you."

"Oh. And to chronicle your travels, he will accompany you." Minnie gestured to the desk. Donald leaned forward to try to get a better look, as he could not see anyone there. Goofy squinted as he was having a similar problem.

"Over here!" a voice called from the desk. Donald and Goofy realized that a small creature was jumping up and down on the desk to get their attention. He was an olive-skinned creature who stood only a few inches tall. He wore a high-collared white shirt, a red vest, a black blazer, a yellow ascot, tan pants, yellow shoes with black tips, white gloves on his four-fingered hands, and a royal blue top hat with an orange band above the rim. When he noticed that the duck and dog had finally seen him, he stopped jumping. "Cricket's the name. Jiminy Cricket, at your service," he introduced himself. He bowed, holding his top hat in his hand.

"We hope for your safe return. Please, help the king," Minnie said.

Donald and Goofy stood at attention. "You can count on us, your Highness," they said in unison. Goofy scooped Jiminy up in his hands, and the cricket climbed up until he was hanging onto the knight's hat. With that, they left the library. Pluto leapt to his feet and followed after them.

They went out into the garden, where the knights stood at attention to see them off. Goofy saluted them and bade them to stand at ease. He nodded to acting Captain O'Hara, who nodded back respectfully. Donald and Goofy then opened the doors to the hedge castle and descended into the spiraling stairway.

The staircase was lined with rounded brick walls. It was dimly lit, illuminated only by interspersed purple lights with mouse head-shaped bulbs. The trek to the bottom was a ten-story descent. Donald and Goofy took the time to ask Jiminy about how he had come to Disney Castle.

"Gawrsh, Jiminy. Your world disappeared too?" Goofy asked in disbelief.

"It was terrible! We were scattered! As far as I can see, I'm the only one who made it to this world," Jiminy lamented.

"And that's when you met King Mickey?" Donald determined.

Jiminy nodded. "Yes. I was wandering around town, having no idea where I was or what I was supposed to do, and he found me and saved me from getting stepped on. I told him what happened before I woke up here, and he brought me to this castle."

"So, that's how he figured out that the worlds were vanishing," Donald guessed. He sighed as he considered the problem. He felt embarrassed that he had not picked up on the stars vanishing. He thought that there was something strange, but he could not determine if anything was truly amiss based on the energies read. Jiminy's account would have been enlightening, but he should have seen it. If he had, perhaps the situation would not have escalated to this point.

"We need to find the king and fix this," he declared. He turned to face Goofy. "Remember, Goofy, whatever happens, we can't tell anyone what's going on."

"Huh? Oh, right! You mean we don't want to cause a panic by letting people know that worlds are being lost," Goofy agreed. "Then I guess we don't want them to know what we're doing. We have to protect the world border."

"Order!" Donald corrected.

"Right. World Order," Goofy amended. They reached the bottom of the stairs and made their way through a hallway with a crown-shaped doorway. "I guess we'll have to switch into our travel duds on the way."

They walked down the hallway and stepped out into a more brightly-lit hangar. Robotic gloved hands attached to thin metal arms performed maintenance on a starship that was made of red and yellow blocks and white wing panels of a special "Gummi" material that was raised in the middle of the hangar. Up in the command booth, two (normal-sized) brown-furred Toonimal chipmunks, one with a black nose and a single buck tooth and the other with a large red nose and two buck teeth, and both wearing a yellow apron with red shoulder straps and a blue pouch on the front with a red Disney Castle sigil overtop a yellow gear as well as brown gloves, ran around running programs and overseeing the maintenance on the large vessel.

Donald walked over to a brass tube that led from his level up to the command booth. "Hello up there! Donald Duck to launch crew! Anytime you're ready!" he shouted into the bell-shaped opening. His voice echoed through the tube and out the other end, where the black-nosed chipmunk, Chip, heard the greeting. He replied with an affirmative, then turned to shout instructions to his brother, Dale. They scurried around and ran programs on the console. The dome-shaped windshield opened up. Two robotic hands moved over and picked Donald and Goofy up, letting them hang upside-down as they carried them over, much to the duck's displeasure. The hands dropped Donald and Goofy, along with Jiminy, into the open cockpit. Pluto ran and leapt into the cockpit while his companions picked themselves up and took their seats, Donald in the pilot's chair. They faced forward as a runway lit up ahead of the Gummi Ship. The Gummi Ship was raised into position, facing the tunnel. As the cockpit closed, Donald turned to see Queen Minnie and Daisy standing on the platform that he, Goofy, and Pluto had been on, present to see them off. Donald gave his girlfriend a thumbs-up and a wink. He turned the engines on, and the propulsion rockets began to start up with a shower of flames. He pointed forward toward the tunnel.

"Blast off!" he shouted exuberantly.

A large neon red arrow appeared over the tunnel, pointing straight down. Donald deflated as he heard a shaft open below the ship. The platform that the ship was on gave way, and the vessel fell into the hole. Its passengers screamed as they fell.

"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAK!"

"Waa-hoo-hoo-hoo-hooieeeeeee!"

"Arooooooooo!"

"Oh, boy!"

On the other side of the world, a dome had opened to allow the ship to pop out. Townsfolk watched in awe as the spaceship shot out of the hole and into the sky. It did not stop until it was out of Disney Castle's atmosphere and floating in space. Donald shook the stars out of his vision and grumbled.

"Huh. I thought I was forgetting something," Goofy remarked.

Donald sighed. He strapped himself in properly, set a course in the ship's World Positioning System, and gunned the engines. The Gummi Ship, its model designation of _Kingdom_ inscribed on the dashboard, flew off into the distance.


	4. Dark Storm

**Chapter 4**

**Dark Storm**

Sora and Kairi sat on the stretch of pier, watching the sun set over the ocean. Riku and Kara were on the other side of the island, securing the boat for the night. Kairi was fiddling with a star-shaped trinket that she had been making out of thalassa seashells. A Wayfinder, she had called it, one used by sailors long ago to guide them through uncertain waters and back to their loved ones.

"You know, Riku has changed," Kairi said.

"What do you mean?" Sora asked.

Kairi shrugged. "He seems… more driven. He's dedicated himself to this. It's not scary. It's just… different."

Sora nodded, having noticed the same thing. "Yeah. He's always been the guy who wants to go the distance. I guess now he has something to shoot for."

"I guess…"

Sora turned to face Kairi and saw that she was staring down at her trinket with an uncertain expression. "You okay?" he asked.

After a brief pause, Kairi turned to Sora with an excited grin on her face. "Sora, let's take the boat and go! Just the two of us!"

"What?" Sora blurted, confused by the sudden shift.

Kairi giggled. "Just kidding!"

Sora simply stared at her in confusion, then let out a chuckle. "What's gotten into you? You're the one that's changed, Kairi," he quipped

Kairi smiled softly. "Maybe… You know, I was a little afraid at first, but now I'm ready," she admitted. "No matter where I go or what I see, I know I can always come back here. Right?"

Sora nodded. "Yeah. Of course!" he affirmed. "And, there and back, we'll be right by your side, me, Kara, and Riku."

"That's good." Kairi let out a sigh and went back to watching the sunset. "Sora, don't ever change."

"Huh?"

Kairi stood for a final long look out at the horizon. "I just can't wait, once we set sail. It'll be great."

* * *

As night fell, Sora and Kara waited at home for their parents to finish dinner. Sora laid on his bed with his hands crossed behind his head, staring up at the ceiling, while Kara sat in his desk chair.

"Did she really say that?" Kara asked, laughing.

"She said she was joking, so I don't think she really meant she wanted to ditch you and Riku," Sora said.

Kara chuckled. "Yeah? Well, you two out at sea on a boat together, the sea salt wind blowing through your hair, the ambient sound of the ocean waves? That sounds awfully romantic."

"Yeah, sure," Sora scoffed. Nevertheless, he focused his gaze on a hanging model of a wooden ship with a boy and a girl passenger. It was an arts and crafts project that he and Kairi had made in class together when they were eight. It made him imagine sailing around with Kairi, a thought which put a smile on his face. Kara noticed this and grinned from ear to ear.

_I just can't wait, once we set sail. It'll be great,_ Sora recalled. He had to agree. The idea of going on an adventure with Kairi put a smile on his face.

Kara took a deep breath, inhaling the smell that wafted up from the kitchen. "That soy sauce smells so good," she all but sang.

Sora let out a laugh. He remembered the first time his mom cooked pot stickers after Kara appeared. When she smelled the odor in the kitchen, she smiled dreamily and demanded to know what it was. When she had tasted it, she looked as though she had found the gift of the goddess. The delicacy, which had only been an occasional meal for the Danvers family before then, quickly became a regular treat.

The wind began to howl, and a strong gust blew in through the window. "Wind's really picking up, huh?" Sora remarked. He took a look out the window as he prepared to close it, and saw dark clouds hovering over the sea. Lightning flashed, lighting up the sky above the small island. The rumble of thunder rolled in seconds later. "A storm?"

Curious, Kara turned around to see for herself. "That's weird. It was supposed to be clear skies tonight, right?"

Sora shrugged. "You and Riku tied the boat up alright, right?" he asked.

"We weren't prepared for any more than a light rain, so probably not."

"What?!" Sora gasped. "Then, we need to make sure nothing happens to it!" He pointed out the window. "We need to get over there!"

Kara blinked in surprise, then nodded. Sora picked his sword up out of habit, and they ran to her room and out to the balcony. Kara slid her arm around Sora's back while he threw his over her shoulder. They held on tight to one another as she hovered up and they flew off.

Moments after they left, Rosetta called up from the kitchen. "Sora, Kara, dinner's ready! Come on down!" A moment passed, and she wondered why they did not respond. "Sora? Kara?"

Kara flew as fast as she could without causing Sora any discomfort. They flew relatively low, noticing that the waves had become rough. Although Kara had aimed for the eastern island, the wind pushed them west, forcing them to ultimately land on the pier.

Looking around, Sora noticed rope around two of the pilings. He looked down and saw two rowboats, each one marked with a family name: _Malverne_ and _Kelley_. "Riku's boat… and Kairi's!" he noted. _Maybe they came for the same reason we did. But wait… we should have gotten here before them, then…_

"Uh, Sora…" Sora turned to face Kara, who was staring up at the sky in horror. He followed her gaze and gasped at what he saw.

High above the island, in the center of the storm, was a swirling orb of what could only be assumed to be dark energy. A red light pulsed in the middle of the evil cloud. Lightning crackled around the orb, and the whole shape rumbled like thunder.

"What is that?" Sora asked, terrified. This did not seem like any normal storm, and it was not something he wanted to be caught in the middle of.

"We should probably get out of here," he suggested, casting glances about warily. He did a double take after seeing a shadow shift at the upper end of the pier, and he watched as the shadow rose from the ground and took a physical shape. He saw a spherical head, a pair of antennae, a small torso, two arms with four clawed fingers each, and legs with pointed feet. A pair of glowing yellow eyes lit up. Two more of the strange creatures materialized and shifted about, their bodies leaning forward to the point where they were almost reminiscent of ants.

Sora shook at the sight and took a step back fearfully. Kara noticed this and turned to see what had his attention. Sora remembered that he was holding his toy sword, and he took a step forward, brandishing it in his battle-ready stance.

"What are these things?" Kara asked.

Sora shook his head. "I don't know. I saw them in a dream, though," he answered. "They attacked me, and I had to fight back." He ran forward and swung his sword at one of the shadowy creatures. It hit the creature in the head and bounced harmlessly off, the head bouncing back and forth like a bobblehead but otherwise showing no sign of injury. Sora went pale. "Or… not."

Another Shadow jumped at him, and he swatted it away with all of his strength, but it simply got back up, unharmed; in the meantime, he could hear the wood crack on impact. The third one scampered toward him and prepared to swipe its claws at him. "Look out!" Kara called. She was in front of him in a split second and delivered a downward punch to the Shadow. It perished under her super strength, dissolving into a cloud of black smoke. The first Shadow sidestepped around, then charged at her, but she destroyed it with a punt.

Kara turned back to her brother. "We need to find Riku and Kairi," she said. "They could be in danger."

Sora nodded. "Right." They jumped off of the pier and onto the beach. They saw more of the Shadows rise up from the ground. "Uh, maybe you should take the lead, since you can actually fight these things," he suggested.

Kara sighed. "Sure." She raised her arms in a boxing position, channeling the gym lessons that had helped her learn to control her strength, and pressed on, with Sora staying close behind. When Shadows drew near, she destroyed them with a single punch each, sometimes kicking through them as well. Some Shadows appeared behind them to ambush Sora. He kicked one of them in the face, knocking it back but not causing it much harm. Another one scratched his leg, causing him to hiss in pain. He struck the Shadow in the head hard enough to swat it aside. He then hit another Shadow as hard as he could. The Shadow tumbled away, but the stress on the toy weapon caused it to break.

Sora stared at his broken weapon in disbelief. "Uh, Kara…"

Kara turned around and saw what had happened. Assessing the situation, she saw that while most of the Shadows on her side had been destroyed, the creatures were swarming around Sora. She realized that while she could handle herself, Sora was completely helpless against the monsters. She had to prioritize his safety.

"We need to go," she said. "Up." Sora turned to her and nodded. He gave his broken lower half of his sword a final resigned look, then jabbed it at one of the Shadows in frustration before dropping it. As Kara flew up into the air with him, he took some small satisfaction in the fact that the pointed, splintered end stuck into the Shadow's face, even if it did not kill it.

In the air, they were safe from the creatures which seemed to be swarming the island, although the increased proximity to the dark orb made them uneasy, and it took all of Kara's power to keep them from being blown about by the wind. With their new bird's-eye-view, they scanned the area for Riku and Kairi. Kara saw Riku on the Paopu tree platform and pointed him out to Sora. They flew down and landed at the platform's edge behind Riku. While glad to see that he was safe, they noticed that there was something unsettling in the air surrounding Riku. He was staring up at the dark orb, not in fear, but as if he was entranced.

Seeing that he was unharmed, their pressing concern shifted to the one friend who was not accounted for. "Where's Kairi?" Sora asked. "We thought she was with you."

"The door has opened," Riku said cryptically.

"What?"

Riku turned to face them, his eyes bright with anticipation. "The door has opened, guys! Now we can go to the outside world!"

"What are you talking about? We've gotta find Kairi!" Sora insisted.

"Kairi's coming with us!" Riku said sharply. Sora and Kara were taken aback at the tone of his statement, as well as his apparent lack of concern regarding the monsters invading the island. "Once we step through, we might not be able to come back. We may never see our parents again. There's no turning back. But this may be our only chance. We can't let fear stop us! I'm not afraid of the darkness!"

"Riku, what are you talking about?" Kara asked, worried. His talk of a door and the darkness made her uneasy.

Self-assured and not seeming to notice how disturbed they were, Riku reached his hand out toward his friends. A pool of darkness materialized below him, spreading out to cover a portion of the platform. Shadowy tendrils rose up like smoke, wrapping around Riku's ankles. Fearing for his friend's safety, Sora ran into the pool to try to pull him out. However, he felt the viscous substance wrap itself around his feet, and he realized that he was sinking in the pool. Kara took a step to help him, but tendrils of darkness rose up in front of her, preventing her from going forward. Sora reached his hand up as far as he could, but Riku was still just out of reach. Kara could only watch in horror as Sora sank into the pool of darkness and shadowy tendrils wrapped up all around Riku. Within moments, the darkness had solidified into a dome that completely encased Sora and Riku.

"Sora! Riku!" Kara called. She desperately punched at the dome, but it felt as though she were punching rubber, the shadows absorbing her blows and pushing her back. "Sora! Riku!"

Suddenly, beams of light broke through the dome of darkness. The shadows rippled as more light shot out, before it exploded entirely in a blinding burst of light. When the light faded, the shadows were gone completely, and Kara could see Sora standing where he had been, unharmed. Even the scratch on his leg had been healed and the blood from the cut wiped away. He held something in his hands, which he was staring at in wonder. Riku, however, had vanished without a trace. The sand had shifted so that there were not even any footprints where he stood.

"Sora!" Kara called, relieved. Sora, broken out of his trance, turned to Kara, and ran over to hug her. "Are you alright?" she asked, hugging him back.

Sora broke off the embrace and nodded. "Yeah," he replied. He held up the strange object that he was still holding to examine it again, and Kara got a good look at it. It resembled a giant skeleton key, a little over three feet in length. With his right hand wrapped around a black knurled handle, the key sat in his grip like a sword or a club. The bow, which wrapped around the handle like a two-faced handleguard, was gold, and appeared to be blocky rather than rounded, with circular sections at the back corners and rounded arcs cut out of the front corners. The barrel was silver and cylindrical, and the bit consisted of a trapezoidal block of the same material that narrowed toward the bottom end. A shape was cut out of the bit in profile, with the negative space resembling Sora's three-pointed crown pendant. At the base of the barrel, above the bow, was a blue rainguard that curved inward looping around the shaft. At the back end, attached to the bow, was a U-shaped loop on which a silver keychain was hooked. Silver chain links extended from the keychain hook and ended with a silver token that consisted of a large circle and two diagonally-set smaller circles, with a small loop at the top of the token to allow the last chain link to connect. Although it seemed to be made of heavy metal, it sat comfortably in Sora's grip, its weight perfectly balanced to his strength.

"What's that?" Kara asked.

"Key…blade?" Sora muttered.

"Huh?"

Sora shook his head. "I don't know how, but something's telling me that this is a 'Keyblade'." He shrugged, not knowing how else to explain it.

"What happened to Riku?" Kara asked, deciding to worry about the strange key later.

Sora shook his head. "I don't know. Hopefully, he'll be alright; he might just be somewhere else. But we need to find Kairi!"

Kara nodded in agreement. She noticed something over his shoulder and tensed up when she saw that it was a Shadow rising up behind him. "Behind you!" she warned.

Sora spun around and instinctively brandished the Keyblade in a fighting stance, the teeth of the weapon pointing upward. He regarded the creature, and for a moment he hesitated, unsure if he would be able to do anything. However, he remembered what a voice had said in the dream where he had first seen the Shadows: _There will be times you have to fight._ Gripping the Keyblade tightly, he glared at the creature before him. "Keep your light burning strong," he told himself. He raised the Keyblade up and swung it down on the Shadow's head, slamming it into the ground on contact. As he realized that he could actually fight the Shadows, he grinned confidently and continued his attack. He swung overhand again, then stabbed at it, knocking it backwards, then delivered a spinning strike. Having suffered plenty of damage from the combo, the Shadow dissolved into black smoke.

He turned to face Kara, who was staring in awe, and pumped his fist into the air. "We can take them!" he announced.

Kara regained her composure and nodded. "Okay. But where could Kairi be?" she asked.

As Sora considered what to do, he noticed something over Kara's shoulder. "Look over there! By the Secret Place," he said, pointing to where the cave entrance was. Kara turned around and saw what he saw: a silver set of double doors where the vines and branches had been.

"How did that get there?" Kara asked.

"I don't know, but let's check it out."

They ran over to the doors, fighting any Shadows that appeared to attack them. When they reached the doors, Kara grabbed the handles and pulled. The doors opened with ease, and there did not seem to be anything different behind them. Wondering what had caused them to materialize, and wondering what they would find in the cave, they proceeded into the Secret Place. Fortunately, the Shadows did not follow after them, and the Keyblade vanished from Sora's hand as it was not needed for combat, but that did not ease the tension.

When they entered the chamber, they saw Kairi standing in front of the door. They were glad to see that she was safe, but they felt that something was not right. After what the phantom and Riku had said, the door seemed more ominous than ever before.

"Kairi!" Sora called out to her. On hearing his voice, the redhead turned around slowly, and the Danvers' relief faded when they saw that she looked weak, her face pale and her gaze unfocused.

"Sora…" Kairi moaned. Before Sora and Kara could attend to her, and before she could potentially get anything else out, the door behind her suddenly shot open. A powerful blast of wind shot out of the new opening and blew her away. Sora tried to catch her, but the instant she flew into him, she vanished completely. Before they could process what had just happened, he and Kara were blown off of their feet. The force of the wind sent them tumbling through the tunnel, crashing into the walls and rolling across the floor until they were ultimately thrown back outside.

When Kara's head stopped spinning, she saw that Sora was lying face-down in the sand. She scrambled over and shook him by the shoulder. "Sora! Sora!" She let out a sigh of relief when she heard him groan. "Are you alright?" she asked as he pushed himself up.

"Ugh… Been better," he replied. He stood up and took a look around, then froze as he noticed the scene around them. "Uh, Kara…"

Kara turned to see what was wrong and quickly went pale. "Oh, Rao…"

The island was gone. They were standing on a small section of sand-covered earth, about a hundred and fifty feet across which seemed to float in midair. Remnants of the shed that had been built against the wall next to the spring were scattered around the area. The dark orb was noticeably lower in the sky relative to their position. The wind howled with even greater ferocity than it had on the ground. Sand fell of the edges of the piece of land, and the wind blew more into the aether. The sky and clouds had turned purple, rather than the nighttime darkness that it had been when they had come out.

As she spun around to take in the devastation around her, Kara took notice of a dark shape, which appeared to be two stalks rising up off of the ground. Looking up, she gasped as she saw a pitch black humanoid figure. She tapped Sora on the arm to draw his attention to the giant. Sora's eyes widened in horror as he gazed upon the figure.

It stood fifty feet tall, and it had a muscular figure, but it was clear that it was not simply a giant man. Its feet narrowed into zig-zagging points. Its hands each had five fingers with pointed claws. A heart-shaped hole was cut out of its abdomen, and they could see straight through and out the other side. A thin piece of sinew dangled from the top center of the heart shape. A pair of bat-like wings stuck out from its back, too small to actually be of any use. Its head was wrapped in a tangled and knotted nest of hair which covered everything except for its eyes, which were glowing yellow dots much like the smaller Shadows. Whatever strands of hair were not wrapped around its head instead stuck up all over the place like a rat's nest.

Sora and Kara stood in shock as they faced the giant creature. Before them stood what had to have been the master of the earlier Shadows, the monster that led their attack on their home islands. The home islands that had been torn apart and were being swallowed by a storm made of darkness. The monster was responsible for the destruction of the Destiny Islands. Riku, Kairi, and almost certainly everyone else they love were gone because of it.

Sora gritted his teeth and glared at the Darkside as his fear became subsumed by rage. The Keyblade appeared in his hand, and he gripped it in a fighting stance. Kara looked at him in surprise.

"Kara, we're not going to let this thing get away with destroying our home, are we?" he asked, his fury evident although he kept an even tone. Kara nodded in agreement, then turned to face the Darkside.

The Darkside drew its arm slowly and charged up energy in its hand, then it bent over and slammed its fist into the ground. A pool of shadow much like the one that had enveloped Riku expanded from the site of impact. His anger at the monster and lingering confidence that generated when he received the Keyblade overpowering the fearful memory of the earlier pool, Sora charged in and started striking the wrist with his weapon, dealing repeated three-hit combo attacks. He saw some Shadows rise up out of the pool and turned his attention to cutting them down before they could hurt him. Kara joined in, destroying them with a single punch or kick each. When she had an opening, she threw punches at the Darkside's wrist. The Darkside soon stood up, pulling its hand out of the ground and out of their reach. The pool dissipated as it took its hand away.

The Darkside dropped to its knees and leaned backward. Purple energy built up in its heart-shaped hole and then released a ball of energy that flew through the air toward Sora and Kara. Sora stood between it and Kara, waited for it to come close enough, then swatted it away with the Keyblade. They watched as the deflected ball flew back up and hit the Darkside in the head.

Seeing that Sora was handling the energy bolt situation, Kara decided to put herself on the offensive. It would probably be more effective to attack the head. She was concerned that flying up to it would only get her tossed around in the chaotic wind. But strength and flight were not her only abilities. She glared up at the monster's head, her eyes glowing a solid fiery red. Twin beams of crimson light shot from her eyes and hit the Darkside square in the face. The giant shook from head to toe as the heat vision burned through its hair and cut into its face. All the while, Sora deflected bolts of darkness back to the source.

The Darkside decided a change in tactics was in order, so it stood up and cupped its hands together in front of it. An orb of condensed energy developed in its palms. When it had expanded to a ten-foot diameter, the orb, shifting with unstable gravity, levitated up into the air.

Kara ceased her heat vision attack so she could determine what the giant was doing. She and Sora watched as the orb floated high into the air, but not quite high enough that its own gravity interfered with that of the storm's eye, and then exploded into hundreds of smaller orbs that rained down on the piece of land. As the orbs fell, Kara and Sora ran around to avoid getting hit. In the meantime, the Darkside took the opening to plunged its fist into the ground to summon more Shadows.

Kara was not having any of that. As the Shadows began to materialize, she found an opening and blew a cloud of freezing air at the pool of darkness. The Shadows were immobilized by the newly-formed frost layer, and the pool was frozen over. Frost also covered the Darkside's wrist, though Kara doubted that it would hold it in place for long. Glancing up at the falling orbs, Sora raised the Keyblade over his head like an umbrella, hoping that it would protect him. He then stepped up onto the Darkside's wrist and ran up its arm. When he had reached its shoulder, he swatted an orb above him and then attacked the giant's head.

A tremor shook the ground. Kara looked down to see cracks form, which sand began to seep down through. "Uh, Sora…" she called up to her brother. The earth split apart with the shadow pool at the epicenter. The ice shattered and the Darkside pulled its arm back up. It stumbled as tremors sent ripples through the sand. As it lost its balance, so did Sora. He tumbled down the giant's back and hit the ground. The Keyblade vanished as it landed next to him.

"Sora!" Kara called out in worry. She took a step, but she felt another tremor, and the wind picked up. Looking up, she saw that the giant orb was swirling faster. She felt a force tugging her upward, and realized that its gravity was threating to consume them all.

Sora felt the same force and realized that he was starting to levitate off of the ground. Pawing at the sand, he desperately crawled over to a large section of broken wood that was buried in the sand and grabbed onto it for dear life as the force pulled him up feet-first. The Darkside flew up into the vortex, either unable to stop itself or allowing itself to be taken away. As for Kara, it took all of her effort to remain grounded, though it felt strange to use her flight to defy gravity in the opposite direction.

Sora heard the sound of wood cracking and knew that his lifeline would not hold for much longer. A few seconds later, the piece of wood that he was holding onto broke off completely. With nothing holding him down anymore, he flew up into the void, screaming as he still reached down toward the collapsing remnant of his home island.

"Sora!" Kara screamed. Without a second thought to her own safety, she flew straight into the swirling orb of darkness after her brother.


	5. Another World

**Chapter 5**

**Another World**

After hailing air traffic control at the spaceport, Donald parked the Gummi Ship in an open space and registered it at the desk. With the bureaucracy of interstellar travel taken care of, he, Goofy, and Pluto marched through the enormous gates (which actually were as big as they looked) and entered the town.

Both the wizard and the knight had changed their clothes during the flight. Donald now had a navy blue high-collar jacket with sky blue lining and cuffs with three pockets and a zipper going down between each of them to the bottom of the jacket, as well as a blue beret with a zipper that wrapped around it several times and a belt in place of the brim. Goofy wore a green turtleneck sweater, a black combat vest with gray lining and four gray pockets, yellow pants secured by a black belt, an orange hat with red goggles that were too small for his eyes, and large brown shoes with steel toes. Jiminy sat in Goofy's pocket, peeking out to get a look around at the surroundings.

"Say, what do you know about this world?" Jiminy asked. He took out a brown leather-bound journal and a pen to write everything down regarding the worlds the party visit and the people they meet.

"Well, I've never been here myself. I only heard about it from Uncle Scrooge and my nephews," Donald explained. "I heard that this world has served as a refugee camp, a safe haven for those who escaped war and genocide and had to flee their own worlds."

"Gosh. I suppose now, if anyone escaped their world's demise, they would find themselves here, most likely," Jiminy surmised.

"Huh. I guess so," Goofy agreed.

"I wondered if they made it here," Jiminy muttered to himself.

They walked through the cobblestone street of the First District and looked around the town. There were two tall street lamps in the plaza. On the far left, there was a restaurant with outdoor seating. To the far right, a wall rose up with a large set of double doors that, according to the map that was mounted at the spaceport's exit, led into the Third District. People of all shapes and sizes ambled about, picking up groceries and chatting with friends and neighbors. Their clothes and skin colors indicated that they came from a wide range of cultures. A few of them were obviously not human, but everyone seemed to be used to them, even those who were probably from worlds that did not have such creatures.

"Gawrsh, look at all the people who lost their homes," Goofy lamented. He glanced up at the night sky solemnly. He blinked, something catching his eye. "Huh?" Curious, Donald and Pluto looked up as well, and Jiminy climbed up onto Goofy's shoulder to get a view as well. Goofy pointed to what he saw. Amidst the tapestry of stars, one shone brighter than the others. The star's light flickered, as if it were struggling to stay alit or crying out for help. Then, finally, it blinked out, its light vanishing as if it was never there in the first place. Goofy, Donald, and Jiminy frowned sadly, realizing what it meant. Pluto whimpered in mourning.

The people who had also noticed the star's odd behavior deflated and adopted solemn expressions when the light blinked out. One woman gasped in shock, and her companion patted her on the shoulder, indicating that it was the woman's first time seeing another world die while her companion was already used to the sight. After a moment of silence to mourn the unknown souls that were lost, they all resumed their business.

Donald turned back to Goofy. "Come on! Let's hurry," he said. Goofy nodded in agreement. Jiminy clambered back down into Goofy's pocket. They continued on, though the fresh memory of watching a star blink out of existence caused him to become impatient. "Where are we supposed to find that Key?" he grumbled.

"Hey, you know, maybe we ought to go find Mister Leonhart," Goofy reminded him.

They walked up a set of steps to a higher level in the plaza, where a shop was in front of them. Donald turned to lead the group to the right, but Pluto, sniffing at the ground and detecting something that seemed to be worth following, turned left down an alley. This went unnoticed by Donald, but not by Goofy.

"Uh, Donald. Ya know, I betcha that…" Goofy began to suggest following Pluto, as he trusted the hound's nose, which has served them all well before.

"Aw, what do you know, you big palooka?" Donald retorted as he continued to walk through the street, still oblivious to Pluto's divergence.

"Hmm… What do I know?" Goofy shrugged and turned to follow Donald. "C'mon, Pluto!" he shouted back.

Pluto continued down the alley, not seeming to notice that his companions were gone, as he followed the curious scent. He walked on, his nose to the ground, until he bumped up against a figure that laid asleep behind a crate. He sniffed up along the human figure's leg, then sat down and watched the figure, panting with satisfaction. He sniffed the air again and glanced to the side, where he saw another human-like figure slumbering against the opposite wall, then turned back to the first human, waiting for him to wake up.

Sora stirred, looking around in a dazed state. When he noticed the odd sight of a yellow-furred dog standing only a few feet in front of his face, he determined that he was not actually awake. "What a dream…" he moaned before dozing back off. Not wanting him to simply fall back asleep, Pluto pounced on him, slamming his forepaws onto his chest. The sudden force jolted Sora awake, his heart racing. "This isn't a dream!" he realized. He looked around quickly and saw Kara, still unconscious across from him. He scrambled over to her and did a quick check to make sure that she was breathing. Upon confirming that, he shook her by the shoulder. "Kara! Kara, wake up!" He kept shaking her until she groaned and her eyes fluttered open.

"Sora…?" Kara shook her head to clear her mind, then took a look around. "Where are we?"

Sora looked around the alley, which was flanked by brown-walled buildings and had one blocked off by crates and boards. "I don't know. This dog just woke me up." He gestured to Pluto.

Kara grinned when she saw the dog. She quickly crawled over and began petting him. "Aw, aren't you a handsome boy?" she cooed. "I'm Kara, and this is Sora. What's your name?" She noticed his green collar and the circular tag attached. "'Pluto'?" she read. "Well, thanks for waking my brother up, Pluto. You're such a good boy!"

Sora laughed as he watched Kara play with Pluto. She had always loved dogs, though she also had a soft spot for a local stray cat. She had mentioned that Jor-El and Lara had owned a dog which was named Krypto, and he could imagine how close they had been.

Sora joined in, scratching Pluto behind the ear. "I wonder where his owner is," he mused. "I wonder where _we_ are."

"Well, Pluto? Do you know where we are?" she asked playfully.

Pluto perked up and raised one of his floppy ears up as he heard someone calling for him. Dutifully, he got up and ran out of the alley back the way he had come.

"Hey, wait up!" Kara called after him. She and Sora chased after him, but when they exited the alley, they could no longer see him. They looked around to locate him, but their focus was diverted as they were taken aback by the surroundings. With the solid brown color scheme and the high walls surrounding the district, it was definitely an unfamiliar scene.

"Okay, this isn't Hopena," Sora said in disbelief.

"I don't think we're in Kansas anymore," Kara gasped.

"This is totally weird. We're in another world!"

"How did we get here?"

"I don't know. I remember getting pulled into that storm."

"I flew in after you."

"After that, everything just went dark."

Kara held her head in her hand, the horror of the situation dawning on her. "Oh, Rao, this can't be happening. I'm lost on another world. What am I going to do? What am I going to do?" she muttered in a panic.

"Hey! Hey! Kara, look at me!" Sora pleaded, putting his hand on her shoulder supportively. Kara turned her head and met his steely gaze. "Don't worry. I'm here. Wherever we are, you're not alone. I'm here. You're safe."

Kara took a deep breath and started to calm down. "Okay. You're right. Thanks." She looked around, still nervous by the change in scenery. "So, what should we do?"

Sora crossed his arms as he considered their course of action. "Well, I guess we should start by finding someone to ask where we are." He and Kara looked up and realized that they were in front of a store with a neon Fleur-de-lis sign that read "Accessories". "That'll work, I guess."

They entered the shop, which was fairly simple in terms of interior design. The middle of the shop was taken up by a bench with various necklaces and rings covered by a pane of glass. To the right was a fireplace. To the left, there was a shop counter with a light green countertop on which a cash register was set. Cabinets were arranged behind the counter and to the left, closer to the door.

"Hey, there. How can I…" The clerk turned to address the new arrivals. He was a muscular middle-aged man with light skin, blue eyes, and blond hair that spiked up somewhat in the middle. He wore a white t-shirt, a pair of baggy blue knee-length pants over top of grey slacks, a very wide, orange waistband with thin, vertical stripes on it, and black shoes. He had a pair of aviator's goggles on his forehead, and he wore a thin chain necklace with a military dog tag attached. He was chewing on a toothpick to placate an oral fixation when he is unable to smoke on the clock. When he saw the newcomers, he frowned. "Aw, you're just some kids."

"Hey, we're not kids! And my name's Sora!" Sora said indignantly.

"And I'm Kara!"

The clerk raised his hands up in a placating fashion. "Okay, simmer down. So, why the long face? You lost, or something?"

"No! Well, maybe," Sora admitted. "Where are we?"

"Huh?" The clerk blinked as realization dawned on him. He noticed that Kara had turned her gaze downward sadly. "Oh…"

Sora and Kara had explained what had happened.

"Well, this sure ain't your island. Welcome to Traverse Town," the clerk said.

"Traverse Town… So, gramps, is this really another world?" Sora asked. Kara gave him a light slap on the arm for his lack of manners.

"Don't call me gramps!" the clerk said indignantly. "The name's Cid."

"Sorry. Do you think our friends are here?" Sora asked.

Cid shrugged. "It's possible. Listen, I'm not exactly the best guy to explain the situation. I can call my friend over and he'll fill you in better. Then he can look around to see if your friends made it. But I wouldn't recommend going out on your own. You can tour around the First District, right outside, but the Second District's not very safe at night, and the Third District is off-limits lately."

Kara nodded. "Okay. Thanks," she said. Waving good-bye, she and Sora left the accessory shop. Unsure of what to do, they decided to stand by the street sign and wait for Cid's "friend" to arrive. They leaned against the wall for five minutes before Sora groaned with impatience.

"We should go look for Riku and Kairi," he said.

"Are you sure?" Kara asked. "Cid said it wasn't safe beyond the First District at night."

"I know," Sora acknowledged. "But I'm really worried about them, and I don't think I'll be able to keep standing around here."

Kara nodded, understanding and agreeing with him. "Alright. If we run into trouble, we'll watch each other's backs." She looked down at his side and remembered that his toy sword had been destroyed. "Can you still use that big key thing?"

Sora looked at his hand and flexed his fingers. "Probably, I guess. If we get in too much trouble, we'll just turn back."

Kara nodded. "Okay. Let's go."

They walked up the road as it went around the accessory shop and up two sets of stairs, and approached a large set of doors directly across from the shop's second-floor rear entrance.

The Second District looked very different from the First District. The streets were lined with darker stone plates, and they were split into two levels: the upper level wrapped around the lower level in front of the multi-floored rowhome-situated buildings that were built around the town. The buildings were of a wider range of colors. They all had the same red-colored roofs as the buildings in the First District, primarily set up in gable and cross-gable styles. Along the stretch on the west side was a hotel, while there was a row of shops to the east, including a hat shop and a shoe store. On the north end, there appeared to be a white-walled church with a clock and bell tower. A path cut into the lower road past the row of stores and the stairs that led to the east and south around in front of the buildings behind the shops.

The first thing Sora and Kara noticed after taking in the scenery was that the district was almost completely empty. Two people walked together from the church to the hotel, both casting their gaze about as if watching for a potential ambush. A keen eye would find that they both had two knives at their hips, visible and easy to reach if they needed to use them. Sora and Kara thought back to what Cid had said and began to worry for Riku and Kairi.

"Help! Someone help me!" They snapped to attention when they heard the voice. Looking around to see where it had come from, they gasped when they saw a man running up the stairs to their level and around the storefronts. A pair of black creatures were clinging to his back, and their glowing yellow eyes caused them to realize that they were the same monsters that they had fought on the island. The Shadows clawed at the man as he ran, screaming, until he tripped and fell to the ground. The Shadows continued to claw at him, cutting deep gashes into his clothes and flesh, before one suddenly shoved its hand into his back. Dark smoke shifted around the Shadows and their victim. A glowing pink heart-shaped object floated up from the limp man's body, and was then smothered by dark smoke, which took the shape of a strange creature that seemed similar to but different from the Shadows before it vanished just as quickly as it had appeared. The man's body vanished into shimmering particles, leaving just the two Shadows.

Sora and Kara stared in horror as they witnessed the man's gruesome demise. The couple on the other side of the street quickly ran into the hotel. They were shaken out of their shock when the Shadows turned their attention to them, and more of the creatures appeared around them.

Seeing that the monsters from the island were surrounding them, Sora tensed up. As if responding to the present danger, the Keyblade appeared in his hand. He gripped it in his battle stance, ready to fight through the Shadows. Kara put her fists up.

The Shadows attacked, but Sora and Kara fought back. Sora received a few cuts and bumps as the creatures surrounded him and slashed at him, but he was able to overcome his opponents, while Kara destroyed her adversaries without suffering any damage. The Shadows that figured out that attacking her was ineffective chose to either attack Sora, only to be cut down by either the Keyblade-wielding boy or the invulnerable girl, or to flee, sinking into the ground and disappearing completely. Soon, all of the Shadows were gone. Sora and Kara began to relax. The Keyblade vanished, its services no longer required.

"Those things are here, too," Sora said, a chill running down his spine.

"Well, now we know what Cid meant by it not being safe out here after dark," Kara remarked. She looked at Sora and saw that he had cuts on his arms and legs. "Sora, you're bleeding!" Sora looked down at himself and realized that she was right. "Do you have a Potion?"

Sora reached into his pocket and wrapped his fingers around a thick glass bottle. He pulled it out and nodded. Kara breathed a sigh of relief. He took a sip and let the beverage heal his wounds. He checked the level, seeing that the bottle was now only a third of the way full, enough for one more sip, before repocketing it. "I guess we'll have to be extra careful now," he said.

Kara nodded in agreement. "If Riku and Kairi are here, they probably would have had to get to somewhere safe," she mused. "Let's start by checking the hotel."

Sora nodded. "Okay." They set off on their way. As they approached the nearest entrance, more of the Shadows appeared out of the ground to attack them, but they managed to destroy the monsters.

The moment they went into the first set of doors into the hotel's first floor lobby-hallway, the larger doors between the First and Second Districts opened, and Donald and Goofy stepped through. They took a look around to find that the Second District appeared to be deserted.

"Doesn't look like he's here," Goofy said.

"Keep looking!" Donald shouted.

"No vacancy. Sorry, kids," the manager said when Sora rang the bell at the check-in desk.

"It's okay. We were wondering if our friends were in here," Sora replied. "Their names are Riku Malverne and Kairi Kelley. They're the same age as us. Riku's a boy with silver hair, and Kairi's a girl with red hair."

The manager tapped his pen against his chin as he leafed through his resident register. "Hmm… We don't have anyone named 'Riku' or 'Carrie'."

"Kairi," Kara corrected, enunciating the syllables so the manager would understand.

"Right. Kairi. Sorry. And, yeah, sorry, but it doesn't look like your friends are here. Listen, if they do show up, I'll let them know you're looking for them, and I'll hook you up. What are your names?"

"Sora Danvers."

"Kara Danvers."

"Brother and sister, huh? Alright. I'll put you two down and keep a lookout for your friends," the manager said.

"Okay. Thank you," Kara said. With that, they left through the doors at the opposite end of the hall from where they entered, just as a different pair of newcomers entered through the first set.

"Let's try the church," Sora suggested. He and Kara entered the side door entrance to the white building to the north, just as Donald and Goofy exited the hotel the same way as the teens.

Donald tried to voice his inquiry to the manager, but he was too short to be properly seen, and the manager was unable to understand him with his warbling speech impediment, much to the duck's annoyance. Goofy had to ask about Squall Leonhart for him, to which the manager replied that he was out, but he would write their names down and let Squall know that they were looking for him if he returned before they found him.

Once they were back outside, Donald stamped his foot in frustration. "Hmph! Where is he?" he asked aloud.

"Mister Leeeeoonhaaaaart!" Goofy called out.

* * *

"I thought this was a church," Sora remarked, perplexed by what he and Kara had found instead. The floor was made up of salmon and very pale red right triangle-shaped tiles, and the walls were lined with square tiles of pale pink and yellow colors. Gizmos and large pieces of basic machinery were spread around all over the place. A grandfather clock with a gold face was installed directly to their left. Two platforms went up and down on what appeared to be scissor jack springs, allowing access to a walkway on top of the machines' outer frames.

"Well, assuming that the rest of the building is still a church, this might just be a central operating room to manage whatever mechanisms are built throughout the town," Kara guessed. "This room just happens to be built into the same structure as the church."

Sora stared at her, impressed by her technical knowledge. He then remembered that her father and uncle were brilliant scientists, so he supposed that she had picked something up from them.

"Well, let's see if we can get into the church from here," he said. He and Kara exited the Gizmo Shop through the door on the opposite side, only to find that they stood on a balcony overlooking the Second District. They traded confused glances before Sora simply shrugged. "We should probably head back. Cid and his friend might be waiting for us," he suggested.

"Good idea." Scooping him up, Kara flew with him back to the large set of doors and reentered the First District… just as Donald and Goofy exited the Gizmo Shop the way they had come.

"Not here, either," Donald noted.

"This could take a while," Goofy remarked.

* * *

When Sora and Kara were back in the First District, they were greeted with a panicked yell. "Run! They breached the First District!" Trailing behind the speaker, they saw more of the Shadows that they had been fighting.

"I thought Cid said it was safe here!" Sora said in disbelief. A Shadow took notice of them and ran over to attack. With the Keyblade in hand, however, Sora struck it down.

"We'll worry about that later," Kara replied. "You should get back to Cid's shop. I'll fly around and make sure everyone stays safe."

Sora nodded. "Okay." He ran down the path that he and Kara had taken earlier, carving through any monsters in his path. Kara ran after the nearest group of Shadows, closing the distance with super speed and destroying them with a series of punches and kicks. Their would-be victim thanked her before he continued on his way back home.

She lifted off and flew around, listening for cries for help and keeping an eye out for Shadows. Whenever she saw the creatures, she dropped down, crushing a Shadow under her feet on landing, and fought them off until they were no more.

While doing another aerial sweep, Kara saw a Shadow suddenly trip. A few seconds later, it suddenly dissipated into smoke. Curious, she dropped down next to where it had stood to investigate. She crouched down to study the ground, and saw two pieces of metal stuck in between the cobblestones. She picked one up for a closer look and saw that it was a small throwing star. She looked around to find where they had come from, then her gaze fell upon a figure standing on a roof. She flew up to the figure, causing her to flinch and stumble in surprise.

"Whoa! Where'd you come from?" the girl asked. She was a teenager, around Kara's age, maybe older, though she was half a foot shorter. She had light skin, violet eyes, and black hair, and she wore a metal headband on her forehead under her bangs with two green tassels on the back. She wore a green tube top with two blue belts looping over her shoulders, a pair of tan short-shorts with another blue belt around her waist, long white socks that reached up to mid-thigh length, orange shoes, orange fingerless gloves with mesh sleeves, and a yellow scarf.

When she regained her composure, the girl looked Kara up and down and grinned. "Hey, you can fly?! That's so cool!" She offered a friendly wave. "I'm Yuffie. Nice to meet you."

"Kara," the Kryptonian returned. She held the throwing star up for Yuffie to see. "Is this yours?"

Yuffie nodded. "Yeah. Thanks. Hey, you wanna help me get rid of the Heartless?" she asked.

Kara raised an eyebrow curiously. "Is that what they're called?" she asked. "Yeah. Sure." She handed the throwing star back to her new ally.

"Sweet! We can cover more ground if we work together!" Yuffie cheered. She noticed some activity on the ground and pointed to a pack of Shadows. "Down there!"

Kara saw the enemies and nodded. "Leave them to me!" She flew down and destroyed the fiends.

* * *

While Kara and Yuffie fought the Shadows, Sora slipped into the Accessory Shop and slammed the doors behind him. He breathed heavily as he leaned against the wall.

"Whoa! Kid, you alright?" Cid asked, concerned. "Sorry about the commotion outside. Usually the place is clean, 'cause they know we have it secure, but they get cocky sometimes. Something must've gotten their attention. Hey, where's your friend?"

"She's fighting the monsters," Sora answered. "Noticing Cid's concerned stare, he added: "She'll be fine. They can't hurt her."

Cid let out a sigh. "Phew. That's a relief. My friends are out there, too. Those things'll be gone in no time."

With nothing better to do at the moment, Sora decided to just wait for the sounds of combat to die down. He relaxed with his back against the wall, staring down at the floor to keep an eye out for any Shadows.

After a few minutes, the sound of screams, running feet, and Shadows dissolving faded away until all was silent. He waited a moment to make sure that it would stay quiet, then stepped back outside. As he closed the door behind him, he willed the Keyblade to appear, in case he would still need to fight, and it materialized in his hand. Taking a look around, he did not see any Shadows left. At the same time, he could not see anyone else around; they had apparently gotten to safety in their homes. Kara was also nowhere to be seen, so he wondered what was holding her up.

Before he could call out for her, he heard footsteps coming from his left. "They'll come at you out of nowhere," he heard someone say in a deep voice.

He turned to find the source of the voice. "Who are you?" he asked.

A man stepped out from around the corner. He wore black leather pants, a short black leather jacket with a high collar, black shoes with zippers running up the center, a white undershirt, a belt secured plainly around his waist as well as three more belts loosely and haphazardly applied around it, black leather gloves, three brown belts around his left arm, and a chain necklace with a pendant shaped like a profile lion's head with a pointed cross sticking out of the chin. A red symbol in the same shape as his pendant was embroidered on both sleeves. Sora could tell that he was very strong, both from his muscular forearms and his penchant for leather.

"And they'll keep coming after you, so long as you continue to wield the Keyblade," the man continued, pointing at the weapon in Sora's hands for emphasis. Sora looked up at the man's face. He had chiseled, handsome features, marred only by a long, thin scar cut diagonally between his eyes. He had fair skin, shoulder-length brown hair, and blue eyes. His expression indicated that he took things with the utmost seriousness.

"But why? Why would it choose a kid like you?" the man mused.

"Hey! What's that supposed to mean?" Sora asked, offended by the stranger's remarks.

"Never mind. Now, let's see that Keyblade." The man took a step toward Sora.

Sora immediately took a step back at this, gripping the Keyblade tightly with both hands. "What? There's no way you're getting this!" he protested.

The leather-clad man sighed. _They never make it easy,_ he thought. "All right the, have it your way." He reached behind his shoulder and grabbed the handle of his weapon. With his other hand, he undid a strap around his collar and let the sheath hanging on his back fall open. He hoisted his weapon on his shoulder, then swung it out in front of him. His was a special weapon, a cross between a sword and a gun. The handle of the weapon resembled a large revolver handgun, with the grip being the size of a rifle butt. The blade extended in front of the cylinder, with an image of a lion engraved near the bottom end. The gun portion's barrel sat against the right side of the blade, allowing a right-handed user to use the flat face of the blade to help line up the shot. A chain was hooked onto the butt of the handle, at the end of which a pendant that resembled the man's necklace was attached.

The man pulled the hammer back, and a crimson glow sparked up, in one of the chambers, visible through the barrel. He pulled the trigger and released a fireball at Sora. Gasping in fright, Sora ran to the side, avoiding the fireball. He trembled as he watched the man slowly approach, and he wondered if he might be a little in over his head. However, he could not just let this creep win. Running did not seem like a great option, and if Kara was not already back, she might be busy helping someone. As such, he would have to hold his own at least until Kara got back.

He studied the man's movements, as he walked slowly as if not expecting much trouble. Perhaps he would not expect a sudden attack.

He ran up to the man and swung the Keyblade into his side. Taken utterly by surprise, the man did nothing to prevent the attack, and suffered a three-hit combo before he swung his Gunblade in retaliation. Sora ducked aside to avoid getting sliced, and received a glancing blow. He quickly ran away to avoid another strike. However, as he had feared, his assailant was not going to let him get away easily. When he reached the bottom of the stairs into the plaza, the man jumped over his head and landed twenty feet in front of him. The man charged up another fireball and shot it at Sora. However, rather than dodge it, Sora waited for the right moment, then sidestepped and swung the Keyblade like a baseball bat. He struck the fireball at the right time and hit it back at his opponent, knocking him back when it made contact. However, the impact against the Keyblade caused a burst that sent Sora sprawling on his back. Groaning in pain, Sora pushed himself to his feet while his adversary regained his bearings. _This won't be easy,_ he thought.

* * *

Kara and Yuffie's clash against the Shadows finished behind a market stall next to the doors to the Second District. They had tracked the last of the creatures to that spot and, content that everyone was safe, decided to stop and chat.

"You're from another planet?! That is so cool!" Yuffie squeed. "So, can everyone fly and stuff there?"

Kara laughed at her new friend's enthusiasm. "Oh, no. I couldn't 'fly and stuff' there. I could only do that after I landed on the islands," she clarified.

"Islands? Lucky! Figures when you land on a new world, you get to have a beach vacation," Yuffie remarked. They both laughed.

"You know, those star things you have are pretty cool," Kara said.

"Oh, these?" Yuffie held up one of her throwing stars. "They're shurikens. The weapons of stealth of a true ninja."

Kara blinked in surprise and amazement. "A ninja?" Yuffie grinned and nodded in confirmation. "So, what's a ninja doing fighting shadow monsters here?"

"Well, my friends and I, we sort of took charge here. So many people needed our help after losing their homes. And things only became harder when the Heartless started showing up here. Not everyone can defend themselves like you can."

"I can imagine," Kara replied, shivering as she remembered the man who had fallen victim to the monsters. "My brother has something that helps him fight back, but he could still get hurt."

Yuffie's interest was piqued. "Your brother? Is he from these worlds?" Kara nodded. "What do you mean by 'something'? Does he have some kind of weapon?"

"Something like that. Something called…" Kara stopped as she heard something with her super hearing. It sounded like someone was having a swordfight. There was also a noise that might have been a muffled gunshot; she realized that she had heard such a noise moments ago but had not noticed it enough to pay it mind. She heard grunting, most likely from both combatants getting hit. One of the voices was unfamiliar to her, but the other one sounded like…

Kara gasped. "Sora!" She leapt over the shelves of fruit and ran off at super speed. By the time Yuffie registered what was going on, Kara had already vanished around the corner, so she set off after her.

Following the sounds of battle, Kara ran to the plaza, where she saw Sora fighting against the leather-clad stranger. Sora delivered a three-hit combo, then dove out of the way as his opponent began to strike back. Kara sped in between them and caught the blade between her hands mid-swing. The man was taken by surprise at her sudden appearance. He tried to pull the blade out of her grip, but she held it tight and it would not budge.

"Leave my brother alone!" she demanded.

Yuffie came around the corner and caught up to the scene. "Whoa, hey! We're on the same side, here!" she called out.

Sora and Kara turned to Yuffie, expressing confusion. "This is your friend?" Kara asked. She looked back at the stoic swordsman, then, after a brief hesitation, let go of his weapon.

"He attacked me!" Sora complained. He still held the Keyblade tight, but he had relaxed his stance somewhat. His limbs shook, and it was clear that he was aching from the difficult battle, even if he had no interest in letting it show.

The swordsman put on the safety catch on his Gunblade, slung it onto his back, and closed it into its sheath by pulling the strap back over. He cleared his throat and muttered "Sorry."

"Oh, don't mind him. He's still not really good with expressing himself," Yuffie said. "Isn't that right, Squall?"

The swordsman only grunted in reply.

"Okay… Well, then." Yuffie turned back to Sora. "I'm Yuffie, by the way."

"I think we can trust her," Kara said. "We worked together to get rid of the shadow monsters."

"Squall was, too," Yuffie added.

"Okay. Then, why did he come after me? Why did he want the Keyblade?" Sora asked.

"Well, you know those creatures that were attacking you? We believe that they've been tracking you because of your key. Our idea was, if we could get it away from you, we could shake them off," Yuffie explained.

"Its power made your heart a beacon to them. That's probably why they appeared in this District. Separating it from you would conceal your heart from them, but it won't work for long," Squall added. "I didn't want to start a fight, but it seemed like a faster option to get them off of your trail."

"Explaining yourself probably would have been more effective," Kara remarked, her arms crossed across her chest.

"Maybe so," Squall admitted. He took a quick glance around. "We should go someplace private. We'll explain everything there."

"If you want to hold onto this until we get there so we don't get attacked, here." Sora handed the Keyblade out to Leon, who took it from him. He let out a yawn. "But can we get some coffee first?"

* * *

Donald and Goofy walked through an alleyway behind the second district hotel. The street was a floor below the main level of the building, even with the street around the accessory shop. Balconies with outdoor tables were attached to the outer-facing doors to the hotel suites on the first floor. Donald and Goofy had come through a door that led into the basement of the hotel and out the other end to the ground level of the Second District. Toward the far end of the alleyway, a waterway for rainwater runoff, which was presently filled ankle-deep with water, started and fed out into a tunnel blocked off by metal bars.

Although they had not been briefed on the danger posed by the shadows, they had noticed that people did not walk around the area at night. Jiminy had also determined that the situation was uncomfortable enough that the hotel's guests did not even take advantage of the balconies to enjoy the evening air. The dim lighting provided by the street lamps only added to the unsettling, deathly quiet atmosphere.

"Gawrsh, there's nobody here. Sure is spooky here," Goofy said.

"Aw, phooey. I'm not afraid!" Donald insisted. At that moment, someone approached them from behind and tapped him on the shoulder. He yelped in fright and jumped onto Goofy's back, shivering as he hung around the knight's neck.

"Excuse me. Did the king send you?" a soft, feminine voice asked. They turned around and saw a young woman with fair skin, green eyes, and long brown hair that was styled in a braid down her back, with curls on either side of her face. She wore a long pink dress with magenta lining and buttons going down the front, brown boots, a pink ribbon tied in her hair, a bracelet made of coiled wire around her left wrist, a loose, lilac belt around her waist with black string tied into a bow on it, and a similarly-tied black string around her neck like a necklace. The woman, Aerith, greeted them with a sweet smile.

Donald chuckled nervously, embarrassed that he had let himself be scared by someone like her.

* * *

Riku groaned as he stirred from what seemed like the strangest dream. He pushed himself up from the cold stone and stood up, only to find himself in an even stranger place. He seemed to be in the middle of a large basin surrounded by waterfalls, except the water ascended the walls rather than adhering to gravity. Stone platforms and large chunks of ice floated before him, the platforms bearing broken arches and structures as if they were collapsed remnants of a building or a stone square. There appeared to be a large castle in the distance, which seemed to be in some degree of disrepair.

"Where… am I?" he asked, posing the question to no one in particular. He looked around and saw that he was completely alone in the rising falls basin. He realized that the previous events on the island were not a dream, and wherever he was, his friends had not appeared with him.

"Sora! Kara! Kairi!" he called out for them. He heard his voice echo, though it was mostly drowned out by the rushing water. There was no response, and to his dismay, there was nothing to indicate that his friends were anywhere near him.

Unbeknownst to him, someone had noticed his arrival. Perched on a higher platform, a cloaked figure watched him curiously.


	6. Paths Cross

**Chapter 6**

**Paths Cross**

Sora and Kara sat at the table in the green-walled hotel room, while Yuffie sat on the bed and Squall leaned against the door to the next suite over. The Keyblade rested against the wall next to Squall. Sora took another sip of his coffee, feeling refreshed and energized after the battle that he had just engaged in (after which he had healed his cuts and burns with the rest of his Potion). He had a feeling that he would need the energy for the discussion and explanation to come.

"Okay, we're here. What's going on?" Kara asked.

* * *

In the adjacent room, which was decorated red and white, with an oriental design in the window frames and yellow artwork resembling dragons and stylized flames, Aerith sat on the four-poster bed, with Donald and Goofy standing in front of her. Jiminy stood on Goofy's shoulder, listening patiently. After meeting the duo, she had led them in through the balcony door to discuss the situation. She had explained that the hotel manager had informed her about them, so she had sought them out.

"Okay, you know how this planet exists as many worlds divided in a cosmic sea, right?" Aerith asked, checking how much her guests were aware of the World at large, knowing that some civilizations were still relatively disconnected.

"Yeah," Donald answered.

"And people have been going between them and sharing knowledge so we could all live in peace together," Goofy added, both to clear up what they knew and also because he figured it would lead well into whatever the woman was going to tell them.

Aerith nodded. "They were at peace. Until now. Now… now we're all in danger," she said sadly. She sighed. "Everything changed when the Heartless attacked."

* * *

"The Heartless?" Sora asked, confused.

"That's what you called those shadowy things," Kara recalled. "What are they?"

"Those without hearts, beings of pure darkness" Squall answered.

"The darkness in people's hearts. That's what attracts them," Yuffie added.

"And there is darkness in every heart," Squall said solemnly.

Sora and Kara remembered the way the Heartless had attacked that man in the streets, and the brutal way they had caused his demise. They remembered watching the strange heart shape float away from his body, then how both heart and body disappeared. "So it's the hearts they want," Kara surmised. Squall nodded.

"Hey, have you heard of a man named Ansem?" Yuffie asked.

Sora and Kara traded perplexed glances. "Should we have?" Sora replied.

* * *

"Ansem?" Donald parroted.

"His name sounds familiar," Goofy mused, scouring his memory. "Oh, yeah! I think the King mentioned him before."

"That's right!" Donald confirmed, remembering the king's account.

"He was a brilliant scientist who ruled the world I came from," Aerith explained. "He and his apprentices were studying the Heartless. I don't know much about what they uncovered, but they compiled all of their findings into a very detailed report."

"Gawrsh, uh, can we see it?" Goofy requested.

Aerith shook her head. "I'm afraid the pages have been lost," she said.

"Lost?!" Donald parroted in dismay. The report would have been very helpful in understanding the situation with the Heartless, he thought.

"Who knows where they might be?" Aerith mused.

"Hmm… Then maybe the King went to find them," Goofy suggested. "He did say he was checking things out and following a theory."

"That's right!" Jiminy agreed. "You said the King knew Mister Ansem, right? Then I'd reckon that he wanted to find this report and learn what he can to properly address the matter."

Aerith nodded. "Yes. Those were my thoughts exactly."

"We've gotta find him, quick," Goofy said.

"Wait!" Donald interjected. "First, we need that Key!"

"That's right. The Keyblade," Aerith confirmed.

* * *

Squall picked the Keyblade up and swung it out to the side. It vanished from his grip and reappeared in Sora's hand, much to the boy's surprise.

"So, this is the 'Key'?" Sora asked, trying to wrap his head around what Squall and Yuffie were telling him.

Yuffie nodded. "Exactly," she confirmed.

"The Heartless have great fear of the Keyblade. That's why they'll keep coming after you, no matter what," Squall said.

"Well, I didn't ask for this," Sora complained, not happy that he had been suddenly thrust with a strange weapon that he did not understand which made him a target for heart-stealing shadow monsters. Kara nodded in agreement, not liking the danger that her brother would be in from now on.

Yuffie shrugged. "The Keyblade chooses its master, and it chose you."

"So, tough luck," Squall said bluntly.

"How do you know so much about the Keyblade?" Kara asked. "Sora only just got it."

"We know some people with weapons like that," Yuffie answered.

Sora sighed and gripped his head in his hands. "How did all this happen? I remember being in my room…" He gasped and jumped to his feet as something horrible finally registered with him. Kara gasped as well, the same thought coming to her head. They both remembered the storm, their friends vanishing before their eyes, the island falling to pieces, the dark orb sucking Sora in and Kara flying after him. "Wait a minute! What happened to my home? My island? My parents? Riku? Kairi?" His voice broke as he said Kairi's name.

"You know what? I really don't know," Squall said, a hint of sympathy in his generally emotionless voice.

Tears rolled down Kara's face. She ran over to Sora and hugged him, sobbing over the loss of their home. They cried in each other's arms. Squall and Yuffie simply let them have their space. They both felt their pain, the pain of losing their home.

The Danvers siblings soon calmed down and separated. "Sorry," Kara said. "It's just… Oh, Rao, they're all gone."

Squall nodded. "Don't worry about it. We understand," he assured her. "Everyone here, we're all the same as you." He paused as he processed her words. "Wait, what did you say? 'Rao'?"

"He's like the God of her planet's religion," Sora explained.

"Oh." Squall nodded, then paused again. "Wait, did you say 'planet'?"

"She's an alien," Sora said.

Squall fell silent, not sure how to respond to that statement. Without him taking the lead, an awkward silence filled the room, before Yuffie decided to break the silence.

"Hey, you know, I've heard that the Keyblade can open all sorts of locks," the ninja said.

Sora held the Keyblade up and regarded it curiously. "Really?" he asked.

Yuffie nodded. "Yep. Give it a try the next time you find a treasure chest or door lock."

"Cool," Sora remarked.

"Sooner or later," Squall interjected, finally getting over his shock at the fact that an alien was in his presence, "the Heartless will find you. You'd best prepare yourselves."

"Prepare ourselves?" Sora parroted.

"For what?" Kara asked.

"To fight for your lives," Squall answered. "Are you ready?"

Sora and Kara looked at each other and reached a silent agreement. They did not fully understand what was going on or how they had gotten into this situation, but they will not have survived the destruction of their home (twice for Kara) to be taken out by the Heartless. They turned back to Squall and nodded. "We're ready," they said in unison.

Squall nodded, and turned to the ninja. "Yuffie, let's go join Aerith. She should be there now with the other visitors."

Suddenly, Yuffie jumped to her feet and pointed at something in the opposite corner of the room. "Squall!" she gasped. All eyes followed hers and saw that a creature had appeared in the room with them. Its face was pitch black with two glowing yellow dots for eyes, indicating that it was of the same nature as the Shadows, but otherwise it looked completely different. Whereas the Shadow's head was a solid black sphere, this creature had a jagged mouth and a dark blue mandible. It seemed to have a muscular figure clad in a bluish-black body suit, brown curly-toed boots, and a steel knight's helmet with angular swirl designs on either side. It wore purple kneepads, steel wristbands, and blue gloves with four red clawed fingers each. Its chest bore a strange insignia that resembled a black heart shape with the tail of a fleur-de-lis at the bottom tip, with a red outline and what appeared to be red thorns making an X in the center. The creature, which looked like some kind of soldier, shifted from side to side. It lacked Squall's stonewalled stance, possessing a hunch and letting its hands dangle, but that only gave it a savage appearance, all but confirming that it was akin to the Shadows. Sora hefted the Keyblade into his battle stance, while Kara raised her fists.

"Yuffie, go!" Squall ordered. Yuffie nodded and ran through the connecting door into the Red Room, not noticing that there were people right next to it.

"Yuffie!" Aerith shouted, wondering what was wrong.

Squall drew his Gunblade and glared at the Heartless. "Sora, Kara, let's go!" With that, he shot a fireball at the Soldier, launching it through the window and into the alleyway. He leapt through the broken window and landed in the street below. Sora and Kara followed after him and saw him slice the Soldier in two, causing it to dissolve into black smoke.

In the Red Room, while Yuffie explained the situation to Aerith, Goofy stared awkwardly at the door, which had been slammed up to the wall. With a creak, the door turned away from the wall, revealing Donald, who had been hit and stunned by the impact of the door suddenly opening in his face.

More Soldiers appeared in the Alleyway. Squall planted himself between them and his teenage charges. "Don't bother with the small fry," he ordered. "Find their leader. They should all go away with their commander gone. Let's go!" He cut through a Soldier, then another.

"Okay," Sora said. He and Kara passed through the hotel basement and out to the Second District.

"How are we supposed to find their commander?" Kara asked. Shadows and Soldiers appeared in front of them. Rather than do the whole song and dance of fighting them, Kara simply blasted them with her heat vision, destroying them instantly and leaving noticeable gashes in the street.

"Hmm…" Sora thought back to everything he had heard since they arrived in Traverse Town, trying to piece together a clue. He remembered what Cid had told them about the town's layout. _The Second District's not very safe at night, and the Third District's off-limits lately._

"The Third District! It has to be there!" Sora announced, feeling proud of himself. "Cid said it's off-limits. That means it'd have to be more dangerous to be in than the Second District, and that could only be because the Heartless leader is there."

"Okay. Makes sense. But one problem. Where is the Third District?" Kara asked.

Sora scanned the area before his gaze settled on a route that opened up to at the back of the stairs on their level. "Let's try that way?" he suggested.

"Okay. Watch your step." She and Sora ran to the route, hopping over the gash that Kara had burned into the street on the way. Heartless appeared in their path, but they simply swatted them aside and kept going without letting their assailants distract them. They reached a set of double doors only to find that they were locked. Sora began to complain, but then remembered what Yuffie had said. He pointed the Keyblade at the door and wished for it to unlock. He heard a click, so he tried the door again, and it opened. They ran through and closed it on the Heartless. They ran up a flight of stairs and stepped through a large set of double doors leading into the Third District proper.

Right past the door, there was an empty house to their left. The landing overlooked a plaza, which could be reached by a stairway to the right. A fountain was erected in the back left corner, against a set of walls that blocked off an alcove where people would operate light shows before the district was closed off; now the water was cut off from the fountain and the lights were dimmed. On the right side, of the plaza, built into an alcove, there was a tall set of doors that led directly to the First District, though it was locked so no one could cross over.

"I don't see or hear anything," Kara said as she looked down into the plaza.

"Maybe it'll appear when we go down there," Sora guessed.

Kara shrugged. "Maybe." She blinked and looked at Sora in worry as something occurred to her. "Wait! We're out of Potion!"

Sora checked his pockets and realized that she was right. "Oh, yeah. Well, I guess I'm just going to have to not get myself killed," he joked. Kara glared at him, letting him know that it was not funny. Sora chuckled nervously. "Well, let's go look."

While Sora and Kara walked down the stairs, Donald and Goofy stepped through a door onto a balcony overlooking the area. They turned around when they heard the rumble of a disturbance in the air behind them and jumped in surprise when they saw a pair of Soldier Heartless. They willed their weapons to materialize in a flash of light in their hands, Donald holding a black staff with a bent blue tip with a collar and a brown witch's hat on top, and Goofy holding a sky blue-painted circular shield with a curved face decorated with yellow outline rings and a black-painted Disney Castle symbol.

Goofy held the shield in front of him defensively and peered over the edge at the creature. "Gawrsh, are these the Heartless guys?" he asked, intimidated by the dark entities.

However, Donald did not let himself be afraid. "Let's go get 'em, Goofy!" he said, brandishing his staff confidently. He aimed his staff at the Soldiers to cast a spell, but as one of them swiped at him, he misfired. The spell hit the creature that charged at him, but the spell exploded on impact and blasted him and Goofy over the balcony ledge, screaming.

Sora and Kara turned and looked up to see what the noise was, then turned back around and ran as they saw the two figures falling toward them. Kara was in the clear, but Sora was not, and before he could get far, Donald and Goofy crashed on top of him, knocking him to the ground.

All three lay dazed on top of each other before their vision finally cleared, and Donald and Goofy's eyes fell on the Keyblade, which had landed a few inches out of Sora's hand. "The Key!" they exclaimed.

"Ugh! Get off of me!" Sora groaned. Kara helped Goofy and Donald to their feet, then helped Sora up when they were off of him. Sora looked the strange characters over. "Who are you?"

Before the wizard and knight could answer, the ground rumbled beneath their feet. The stone tiles shifted up and down from the center outward, then square pillars shot up to block off all paths out of the plaza. A squad of Soldier Heartless materialized, dropping out of dark orbs that existed only long enough to leave the Heartless in their place, and surrounded the group of four. Deciding that pleasantries could wait until the monsters were all dealt with, Sora, Kara, Donald, and Goofy turned to face them with their backs to each other. Donald and Goofy summoned their weapons back to their hands, while Sora picked the Keyblade back up and Kara put her fists up.

Donald cast a spell that launched a fireball at a Soldier, then cast another, destroying the Heartless. Goofy charged forward, slamming his shield into the Soldier in front of him. Sora attacked a Heartless with the Keyblade, then moved onto another one when he vanquished it. Kara punched Soldiers, destroying them in a single hit each.

Soon, all of the Soldiers had been vanquished. Sora and Kara looked around warily. The barriers that had been raised to wall them in could only have been conjured by the Heartless' commander, so they could only wait for it to make its appearance.

They did not have to wait long, as two objects dropped from the sky, hitting the ground with metallic clangs. The objects were purple and black and looked very much like armored feet with spikes where the ankles ought to be. Two more objects dropped in at the same time that the feet hit the ground, these resembling hands with four clawed fingers each, and bounced off of the ground. A hollow chunk of purple metal which had a sort of hourglass shape and what resembled a raised collar dropped in next, bouncing off of the ground as well. All of the pieces took position, remaining disconnected from each other but arranging themselves to resemble a headless humanoid figure. A ball with a grey helmet visor and three spikes fell from the sky as well, landing in the open neck of what now clearly served as the torso of the figure. After sitting in place for a few seconds, the piece that served as the figure's head hovered up a few inches and the figure as a whole began to move. The figure had the same symbol that was on the Soldier Heartless on the front of its torso, overtop of the lilac diamond pattern that wrapped around the body. Gold rings were wrapped around the ankles and wrists.

"That looks like the leader," Kara said.

"Yup," Sora agreed. He shook in fear at the sight of the Heartless, which rose roughly fifteen feet in height, but he steeled himself, knowing that there was no way out of the fight and not wanting the monsters to win.

The Guard Armor marched toward them, moving as if all of its body parts were connected even though they were not. Sora and Goofy ran in and attacked its legs. The Heartless stopped walking and spun its arms around itself, hitting them and knocking them aside. Donald launched fireballs at the hands. Angered that her brother had been hurt, Kara jumped into the hands' path and grabbed one by the fingers. She pulled it away and threw it to the ground, then tackled it and pummeled it until it dissipated.

Donald stared in disbelief as Kara destroyed the Heartless' gauntlet with her bare hands. "What the…?" While he was distracted, one of the Hammerlegs kicked him. As he was lay stunned on the ground, the legs moved away from the rest of the unit and stomped toward him.

"Hey!" Sora shouted. He threw the Keyblade at one of the legs, letting it spin in midair and hit its target. The legs stopped their march and turned to face him. Sora looked down at the Keyblade, which had clattered to the ground, and back up at the legs, which were now marching toward him. "Uh-oh," he said, realizing his predicament.

Fortunately, Kara came to his rescue. She grabbed one of the legs by the ankle and swung it like a bat, hitting the other leg and tipping it over. She leapt high into the air and slammed the leg hard onto the ground as she landed, leaving a small crater in the ground and destroying the leg.

Seeing and opening, Sora called out thanks and made a break for the Keyblade, only to get hit by the remaining gauntlet and thrown back against the wall, hitting his head.

"Don't give up!" Goofy shouted. He blocked a spinning attack from the Guard Armor's torso and tossed a Potion to Sora. Sora caught it and took a sip. Fully healed, he got back up, called out thanks, and ran for the Keyblade. The gauntlet flew at him, but he somersaulted under it. The remaining Hammerleg appeared in front of him, but Donald shot a fireball at it, stunning it long enough for him to run around it and pick the Keyblade up. The Hammerleg attempted to stomp on him, but he spun around and hit it with an upward swing that caused it to tumble backward. He began to attack the Hammerleg while it was down, soon joined by Goofy, until it was dissolved into dark smoke.

Donald shot a fireball at the gauntlet then moved to cast another spell, but nothing happened. As he grumbled in frustration, the gauntlet slapped him and knocked him down. It tried to attack him while he was vulnerable, but Kara appeared between them at superspeed and punched it, launching it across the plaza. She turned around and helped Donald to his feet, then flew after the gauntlet, punching it in midair until it was no more. Donald could only stare in awe, mouth agape.

Now that the limbs had been destroyed, Sora, Kara, Donald, and Goofy turned to face the Guard Armor's torso. Donald took a swig of a drink from a cubical blue bottle. Sora and Goofy moved in to attack. The torso spun around, throwing them off balance, and moved around to harm them. Kara punched the torso, causing it to stop moving. She then blasted the Armor's head with her heat vision, while Sora and Goofy assaulted the body and Donald cast spells at it. Under their continued attack, and with the head suffering from Kara's heat vision blast, the Armor was unable to defend itself.

They stopped attacking when they noticed miniature explosion clouds burst from either opening in the torso, which became utterly still. Unable to hold itself up, the head dropped into the neck with a metallic clang. As its power faded, the pillars that it had raised sank back into the ground. A large glowing heart, not unlike the one that had exited the body of the man that the Heartless had slain and, as they realized, the ones that had floated up from the Soldier Heartless that they had destroyed, floated out of the Guard Armor's body and dissipated high in the air. The head and torso dissolved as well, and in a moment there was nothing left of the Heartless commander.

* * *

"So, you were looking for me?" Sora asked. After they had taken a moment to catch their breath after the battle, the four of them had started talking. Sora was bewildered that his new allies were anthropomorphic animals, but Donald and Goofy succinctly cleared the matter of them being Toonimals up. Kara had explained that she had powers because she was an alien, and Donald and Goofy had explained that they had been searching for someone with the Key.

"Uh-huh," Donald and Goofy replied in unison, nodding.

"They, too, have been seeking the wielder of the Keyblade," Squall confirmed as he and Yuffie stepped into view, having just arrived in the Third District.

"Hey, why don't you come with us?" Goofy suggested. "We can go to other worlds on our vessel."

_Go to other worlds…_ Sora looked downcast as he mused wistfully on how he and his friends had wanted to travel to other worlds. Riku and Kairi would have loved to hitch a ride on the Toonimals' vessel. But his friends were nowhere to be found.

Kara seemed to read his mind. She put a reassuring hand on his shoulder. "Maybe we can find Riku and Kairi if we go with them," she said.

"Of course," Donald assured them. Sora looked up at him, feeling hopeful that they might be right.

Goofy tapped him on the shoulder and took him aside. They leaned in close with their backs to Sora and Kara. "Are you sure?" Goofy asked, whispering.

"Who knows?" Donald admitted. "But we need him to come with us so he can help us find the king. And to fix the mess he warned us about."

They flinched as Kara loudly cleared her throat, and turned to see that she was glaring at them with her arms crossed. "I can hear you, by the way," she informed them. They gulped and Donald chuckled nervously.

"Sora, Kara, go with them," Squall said. "Especially if you want to find your friends."

Sora sighed. "Yeah, I guess," he said despondently, his hopes dashed when he caught on to the duck's doubt.

Donald realized what he had done and considered what he could do to cheer Sora up. "But you can't come along looking like that," he warned, wagging his finger. "No frowning, no sad faces. Okay?"

Goofy chuckled. "Yeah! You gotta look funny, like us!" he agreed.

"This boat runs on happy faces!" Donald continued.

"Happy?" Sora repeated, uncertain. Donald and Goofy smiled to demonstrate.

Kara giggled at the Toonimals' faces. She clapped her hands together. "Come on, Sora! Show them what you've got!" she cheered him on. Yuffie ran around behind Donald and Goofy to see what Sora does.

Sora bent down, then looked up, flashing a huge cheesy grin. When Donald and Goofy did not react, his smile faded and he looked at them awkwardly. Right then, Donald, Goofy, Kara, and Yuffie, the latter of two of whom had been holding in their giggles, burst out laughing.

"That's one funny face!" Goofy remarked.

"It's even better than your sixth grade yearbook photo!" Kara chortled.

Sora chuckled and stood up straight. "Okay, why not? I'll go with you guys," he said. He turned to Kara. "You in?"

Kara nodded. "Of course," she replied.

"Great to have you aboard!" Goofy said.

"Donald Duck," the wizard introduced himself, putting his hand into the center space between them.

"Name's Goofy." The knight did the same.

"I'm Kara," the Kryptonian followed suit.

"And I'm Sora." The spiky-haired teen slapped his hand on top of the stack.

"A-hyuck! All for one and one for all!" Goofy cheered.

And thus was the dawn of an everlasting partnership.

* * *

In a darkened chapel on another world, six figures stood around a table, watching a hologram that showed Sora, Kara, Donald, and Goofy conversing. It had been conjured by magic after they had sensed the Heartless flee from Traverse Town. Curious, they had used the hologram to show them the events during and following the Guard Armor's final battle.

"That little squirt took down that Heartless. Who'd have thought it?" a tall figure with a flaming blue head of hair remarked.

"Such is the power of the Keyblade. The child's strength is not his own," a rail-thin man holding a staff countered.

"But that little lass is something else," a large creature that seemed to be made of burlap said. "She's got some power, and she didn't even need those pretty legs to stand around."

"Why don't we turn them into Heartless?" an obese woman with six tentacles in place of legs cackled. "That'll settle things quick enough."

"And the brats' friends are the king's lackeys," a hook-handed man with a drawling accent added. "Swoggle me eyes! They're all bilge rats by the look of 'em!"

"You're no prize yourself!" the burlap creature teased.

The offended man brandished his hook threateningly. "Shut up!" he shouted.

"Enough," a tall woman dressed in a tattered black cloak demanded. Her compatriots fell silent instantly at her commanding tone. "The Keyblade has chosen him. And the girl, why, she is an interesting matter. Will it be they who conquer the darkness? Or will the darkness swallow them? Either way, they could be quite useful."


	7. Blast Away

**Chapter 7**

**Blast Away**

Since the Guard Armor had been destroyed, Squall permitted Sora to unlock the gate between the First and Third Districts, which Sora did by thrusting the Keyblade into the large yellow keyhole to the right of the door. Sora, Kara, Donald, Goofy, Squall, and Yuffie stepped through the door and entered the First District. Seeing them arrive, Aerith ran over to greet them.

"What's the status?" Squall asked.

"Heartless all over town vanished all of a sudden," Aerith explained. "It looks like you did it."

Sora let out a sigh. "Phew. That's a relief."

"Good job," Squall commended. "You bought everyone here some peace and quiet."

"Does that mean the Heartless are gone from here for good?" Kara asked.

"Probably not. You just scared them off by taking out their leader," Squall told them. "Rule of thumb: take out the big guy, and the small fry won't want to get in your way."

"They'll probably come back in a few months, or sooner if something draws their attention," Yuffie said. "But hey, now we have time to rebuild, relax, and prepare for when they do return. So, thanks." She gave them a thumbs up.

"But I bet they're doing what they've done here on all sorts of worlds," Donald sighed.

"Who knows how far the Heartless have spread?" Squall mused. "You'll need to be prepared for your journey ahead. It'll be fraught with danger."

Sora reached into his pockets and felt the single, half-empty bottle of Potion. He turned to Donald and Goofy. "How are you guys on Potions?" he asked them.

"We only stocked enough for a few days' worth of fights," Goofy replied.

Aerith took a pouch from her satchel and handed it to Sora. "We figured you wouldn't have arrived with much, so we pulled together some Munny for you," she said.

"Now that you have dough, you can stock up at the shops. They've got some pretty neat stuff," Yuffie added.

Donald's face lit up at the idea. "Hey, my nephews are running a shop here. Let's stop on in," he suggested.

"The three teenage ducks?" Aerith asked. Donald nodded. "They're in the general store over there." She pointed to the building that was built into the wall to the left of the stairs, with a brightly-lit sign above the double doors that read "Quack Pack General Store".

"Oh boy, oh boy!" Donald cheered.

"You have family that lives here?" Sora asked. "Well, let's go say hi!"

"We'll set you up with a place to spend the night. Let Cid know when you're done shopping so we can take you there," Aerith told them.

Kara nodded. "Will do. Thank you."

Squall, Yuffie and Aerith left to carry out their task, with Yuffie waving good-bye. Sora, Kara, Donald, and Goofy made their way to the general store, but stopped when Sora felt his foot bump against something.

"Hey! Watch it, kupo!" They looked down to see a small—about two feet in height—vaguely-humanoid creature with white fur, stubby limbs with tiny clawed digits, purple bat-like wings, a cat-like head, a round red nose, and an antenna with a large red ball of fuzz at the end. It sat on the ground right in front of Sora's foot, but its indignant expression and prior complaint indicated that it had been knocked over.

"Oh! I'm sorry," Sora said, crouching down to the creature's level. "I didn't see you there."

The creature picked itself up and brushed the tuft of fur on its chest. "I'll let this one slide, kupo. But you should be more careful of the people around you."

Sora nodded. "Sure thing," he replied.

The creature noticed that he was staring at it curiously. "Is something wrong, kupo?" it asked.

Sora blinked as he realized what he was doing. "Huh? Oh! Sorry. It's just…" He started scratching the back of his neck in embarrassment. "I've never seen anything like you before. What are you?"

"Sora! Don't be rude!" Donald scolded.

The creature waved the matter off. "No big deal, kupo. I'm a Moogle. My kind's been around a lot of places, but we're not everywhere, so I can understand if you're unfamiliar, kupo." Gingerly, Kara reached her hand over and touched the Moogle's ball of fuzz. The creature jumped back at the touch and glared at her. "Hey! Don't touch my pom-pom, kupo!"

Kara quickly withdrew her hand. "Sorry! I—Sorry," she said. The Moogle let out a huff and walked off, indignant. Goofy gulped and Donald let out an exasperated sigh.

"Let's go," Donald grumbled, beckoning the others to follow him into the general store.

A bell rang over the doors as they entered the shop. Three anthropomorphic ducks turned to address them. They were smaller than Donald, and they were identical to one another, with the same white plumage, blue-tinted sclerae, and blue irises. The only thing differentiating them was their attire: they all wore similar t-shirts and baseball hats of different colors, one dressed all in red, another blue, and the third green. The duck in red stood behind the counter, taking stock of the merchandise, the duck in blue swept the floor, and the duck in green managed the cash register. "Unca Donald!" the duck in red greeted in a voice similar to his uncle's. They clambered over to embrace Donald, who hugged them in kind.

"Huey! Dewey! Louie! How have my Junior Woodchucks been?" Donald asked.

"We've been good," the one in blue, Dewey, replied.

"Business has been good," the one in green, Louie, added.

"Heya there, fellers," Goofy greeted, waving to the triplets.

"Hiya, Goofy!" the one in red, Huey, replied. "What are you doing here?"

Donald separated from his nephews' embrace. "The king gave us a mission," he told them.

"King Mickey?!" Louie gasped. "Is he with you?"

Donald and Goofy shook their heads sadly. "He just left us with a letter telling us what to do," Donald explained.

"Oh…" Dewey looked up and got a good look at his uncle's new companions. "Who are your new friends?" he asked.

"I'm Sora!"

"And I'm Kara."

"The king wanted us to find them and take them with us to stop what's happening to the worlds," Donald told his nephews.

"Really? That's great!" Huey cheered. A thought occurring to him, he ran back and clambered back over the counter. "Sounds to me like you'll need plenty of supplies for the road. We've got snacks, drinks, healing medicine, camping supplies, and whatever else you might need."

Dewey and Louie retook their positions. "A-hyuck. Thanks, kids," Goofy said. He, Donald, Sora, and Kara set about browsing the merchandise. Sora opened the pouch and counted the half-inch-long Munny crystals, which appeared yellow or blue depending on how the light shone through them, and saw that they amounted to 500 Munny.

"So, what are you doing running a shop here?" Sora asked.

"Well, we took an apprenticeship with our Unca Scrooge," Louie said.

"That's my uncle; their great-uncle," Donald clarified.

"At the end of it, he sent us out to start our own business," Huey continued. "We decided to come here so we can help provide relief for everyone here."

"Aw, that's nice of you," Kara said.

As they talked, the customers selected the merchandise, and Huey collected it from the shelves and set it on the counter for them. Louie tallied the prices up on the register. "That'll be 350 Munny," he said.

"What?!" Donald blurted. "I don't get a family discount?"

"You know who trained them?" Goofy quipped.

"Gee, Unca Donald. We're running a shop of essentials in a refugee camp," Dewey remarked, offended. "If anything, we should be hiking up the prices for you!"

Donald deflated, realizing that he was right. "Sorry," he said.

Sora separated the 350 Munny crystals and left them on the counter for Louie, then he, Kara, Donald, and Goofy gathered the merchandise up. They said good-bye to the triplets and left the store. They went to the Accessory Shop, where Cid explained that, along with traditional jewelry and articles, the accessories he sells are infused with protective properties. They spent the last 150 Munny on a Protect Chain for Sora, then told Cid that they were ready to turn in. Cid then dialed Squall on his phone and had them wait for him and the others to arrive.

* * *

"Here you are," Squall said as he led them into an empty house in the Third District. It was a small house with a single room, which held two beds, a table, and a dresser. "Since the Heartless commander set up shop here, this entire district was left unoccupied. Defeating it opened up a lot of real estate for the people here, though I'm sure it will be a while before they feel comfortable living here."

Sora flipped the light switch, but the lamp bulb only sparked. Goofy blew a layer of dust off of the bedsheets. Yuffie shrugged. "Sure, it's a little musty, but it should be good for tonight," she said.

Sora kicked his shoes off and sat on one of the beds, testing it out. He heard the springs creak, but it felt comfortable, and the pillow was soft, once he fluffed it. "This should work," he decided. Donald waved his finger over a candle, which Aerith had placed when checking the place out, and the wick lit with a small flame.

Noticing that there were only two beds, Goofy unrolled one of the sleeping bags that they had bought from the general store. Kara unrolled another one and let Donald take the other bed.

"Well, we'll meet up with you in the First District in the morning," Squall said. He tossed a pager to Sora. "Page us if you need anything."

"Okay," Sora replied, setting the pager on the table.

"Good night," Aerith said as she, Squall and Yuffie turned to leave. Yuffie waved good-bye as Squall closed the door behind them.

Jiminy climbed out of Goofy's pocket and hopped onto the table. "Well, I'd say that tonight's been rather interesting," he said.

Sora and Kara jumped back in surprise when they saw the cricket. "What the– where did that come from?" Sora asked.

"Oh. My apologies. I didn't get to introduce myself. The name's Jiminy. Jiminy Cricket." Jiminy took his hat off and bowed to them. "I've been assigned to keep a record of our journey."

Sora and Kara looked at each other in confusion, then shrugged, deciding to roll with it. "Well, it's nice to meet you, Jiminy," Kara said. "My name's Kara Danvers, and this is my brother, Sora."

"It's a pleasure to meet you as well," the cricket replied.

Goofy yawned. "Well, I guess we should turn in," he said. He took his hat off and set it on the table for Jiminy to use as a makeshift sleeping bag. Sora, Donald, Kara, and Goofy climbed into their beds and sleeping bags. Donald blew the candle flame out, and the room was wrapped again in darkness. "G'night."

"Good night," Sora, Kara, Donald, and Jiminy replied.

* * *

There were not any stars close enough to shine over Traverse Town as brightly as the ones that most other worlds called a sun, but the two nearest lights gave the sky a glow reminiscent of a pale daybreak. The party met with Squall, Yuffie and Aerith for breakfast at the First District café. Squall said that he would have wished that they could take time to help Sora and Kara train, but Donald insisted on the urgency, and Goofy suggested training on the way to the next world. After the meal, the refugee leaders wished them luck on their quest, and Donald and Goofy led Sora and Kara to the spaceport.

"Hang on. You have a spaceship?" Kara asked.

Donald waved his hand in a "so-so" expression. "Um, sort of. We can't actually go between planets, but our Gummi Ship is the most advanced mode of transportation between worlds," he explained.

"It's more secure and maneuverable than ferries and barges, and I think it's even a step above planes. But it really does feel like we're in a space opera when we're flying around in it," Goofy added with a chuckle.

"I can't wait to see it," Sora said cheerfully.

"Well, let me just take care of all the red tape, first," Donald remarked. He signed the ship and crew, with its new passengers, out at the desk, then led them across the lot. Sora and Kara looked around at the planes and ships they saw as they passed. When they approached the _Kingdom_ Gummi Ship, they stared at the rocket ship in amazement. It was the size of a house, and large enough to house a couple dozen people. Sora had not seen anything like it outside of movies. For Kara's part, she noted that it was not as sleek as the ships on Krypton, but it was nonetheless impressive. Donald pressed a button on a key fob, causing a ramp to open out of the underside of the ship and touch down on the ground. They climbed the ramp and into the ship. "Let's get this thing off of the ground, first," Donald said, leading the group through the hall and up a flight of stairs to the cockpit. Sora gaped in awe at the station before him. He wanted to take a closer look at everything, but Donald told him not to touch anything and Kara held him back. She remembered her father and uncle's crafts, as well as every other vehicle from her home planet, so it was not as much of a new experience for her.

There were five seats. Consoles sat against the side walls, from which they could be extended to become accessible to a different seat, depending on who was given which task. The only exception was the seat in front, which was most definitely the pilot's station and had a steering handle that was shaped like an angular heart stretching out toward the seat from a crown-shaped dashboard. A slider lever was built into the handle, its purpose being to control the power in the rear thrusters.

Donald sat down in the pilot's chair, while the others took some of the generic seats. The duck peeked behind the high-backed seat to see who was in which seat, then opened up a touchscreen to assign different consoles to them: a gunner's controller to Goofy, a radar touchscreen to Sora, and a status log screen to Kara.

Donald brought up a computer to punch in all of the commands to start the ship up. The undercarriage vents opened up and projected air downward with a large amount of force, lifting the ship off of the ground. When the ship was high enough above the ground, Donald punched in a command, causing the landing gear to withdraw into the shell of the ship. He turned the steering handle so that the ship rotated until it faced the landing stretch.

"Buckle up and prepare for blast-off!" Donald announced. They all locked their seatbelts across their waists, then pulled down straps from over their shoulders to hook into the buckles. Donald moved a comm system to his position and asked for permission to launch. When the spaceport officer on the other end said that he could not understand him, he moved the comm system over to Sora and had him request permission. When permission was granted, Donald turned the thrusters up, then shouted "Blast off!" and shot the ship forward. He turned the steering handle upward and guided the ship out of the spaceport and into the sky.

When the ship exited Traverse Town's orbit and the space between worlds was no longer blinded out by sky, Sora and Kara stared in awe at the stars and the clouds of space dust floating in the void. Sora had dreamed of how beautiful the space between would be, but he thought it was even better than he imagined. Kara had seen space a few times, but she had only seen a part of this sector for a brief period four years ago, and either way the view of space never ceased to amaze. Jiminy sat in the cupholder on Goofy's seat, watching the stars as well while humming a song.

They flew until Traverse Town was just another star in the distance before Donald turned back to the others. "Sora, mark a world on the map and I'll put the ship on autopilot," he ordered.

Sora tapped on a green world marker on the radar screen, causing a selection reticule and navigation information to appear over it. "It says it's a six-hour flight," he said.

"All right then." Donald flipped a switch, and a sign lit up that said AUTOPILOT. He moved the consoles back against the walls, unbuckled his seatbelt and hopped out of his seat. "It'll be smooth sailing, so we don't need anyone at the helm. An alarm will sound if the environment becomes too complicated for the computer to maneuver about on its own. Until that happens, we're free to move about until we reach our destination," he informed the crew. They unbuckled their seatbelts and stood up.

"So, what do we do now?" Sora asked.

"How about we do some training?" Goofy suggested. "I'd like to take a look at what you can do with that Keyblade."

Sora nodded. "Okay, sure." He, Kara and Donald followed Goofy out of the cockpit, through the hallway, and into a spacious room that only had a bench and a ceiling-high cabinet.

"As captain of the royal knights, it's my job to make sure everyone is in top condition," Goofy informed him. "So, first things first, I want to see what you can do, and then I can help you grow from there."

"Uh, okay. But isn't your thing a shield?" Sora asked, wondering how effective he would be at teaching him to use a sword, or whatever the blunt-seeming Keyblade was supposed to be.

Goofy chuckled. He opened the cabinet, revealing a wide variety of practice weapons, such as swords, shields, staves, clubs, and nunchakus. "First year knight cadets learn to use a variety of weapons. At the end of their second year, they choose a weapon to use for the rest of their knighthood. I don't really like violence, so I chose a shield, a protective tool that's only as offensive as you need it to be. But when I became an instructor, and then captain, I gained some more experience with each of these when teaching the new generation of knights."

"Cool," Sora commented, impressed. Kara nodded, sharing the sentiment.

Goofy took two practice swords and tossed one to Sora. "Let's see what you've got." He held his sword outward with one hand, like one would wield a fencing saber, and waited for Sora to make the first move. They clashed swords, with Goofy parrying Sora's blows with deft mastery, but Sora also managed to get a few good hits in and effectively counter against some of Goofy's attacks.

When he was satisfied with the demonstration, Goofy tapped the tip of his sword against the ground to signal the end of the sparring match. "I like your technique, Sora," he complimented. Sora grinned and rested his sword on his shoulder. "Who trained you?"

Sora considered his answer, then shrugged. "Nobody, I guess. I just picked up a toy sword and started play-fighting with my friends when I was a kid," he explained.

"You're self-taught? I'm impressed." Goofy scratched his forehead as he thought of how Sora could improve. "You have a lot of strength and skill, but you could use some finesse. I see you're throwing your weight into your attacks, so you're not using up too much energy, but you're also putting it all on your back. I can help you improve your form."

"Thanks, Goofy," Sora said.

"Wait a minute!" Donald interjected. "You're self-trained? So, all of your skill with the Keyblade is what you knew in terms of fighting already… Sora, how long have you had that Key?"

"Um… A day or two? It just appeared in my hand when our island was attacked. I don't know how long we were out when we woke up in Traverse Town," Sora admitted.

Donald groaned. "Figures. We're going into field action, and the Keyblade wielder doesn't have a grasp on the basic skills of his class," he grumbled.

"What do you mean?" Kara asked.

"I'm talking about magic," Donald said. "All Keyblade masters have been able to command magic. Anyone can learn to channel the energies that flow through and around them with enough discipline and willpower, but for Keyblade masters, it's practically a requirement."

"I can use magic?!" Sora asked, amazed at the possibility.

"Yes, but I'll have to teach you first." Donald cleared his throat and summoned his staff. "Let's start with something basic. Most first-time magicians find that this is the easiest to learn when starting out. I'm going to teach you to cast a Fire spell."

Sora raised an eyebrow. "Fire? You're not going to have me levitate stuff or shine a light?" he asked.

Donald shook his head. "This isn't _Harry Potter_! That might work for some fields of the occult, but for this manner of spellcasting, Fire is simplest. In essence, the way my class of mage, as well as Keyblade masters, cast spells is by channeling the energies within us and release it in the form we choose. From what I can tell, Fire is probably easiest to pull off because it's a natural force being enacted and projected by our will; an exothermic reaction, except as a fireball, so I guess it's more likely to let itself happen."

"Uh, okay. So, how do I cast a Fire spell?" Sora asked. He was excited to start. He was actually going to learn to use magic!

"First, you might want to summon your Keyblade. You should be using that as your wand, and it's already in sync with your heart, so it will help you understand and guide the flow of your mana," Donald advised.

Sora nodded. He held his hand out, and the Keyblade appeared in his grip. "Good. Now, relax. Breathe in slowly, then breathe out." Sora followed Donald's instructions. "Now feel the energy flowing through you, from your head down to your toes. It is a part of you, and it is a part of the world around you. It flows into and out of your heart, and it is guided by the beat of your will. Your mana goes where you direct it, and it takes the form that you tell it to." He pointed his staff forward, aiming it at the flameproof wall away from his companions. "Will the magic to flow through your arm, into your wand. Then release it and charge it up to take form. Use your magic to create… Fire!" A ball of fire formed in front of the head of his staff and flew forward, exploding against the wall, then fading away as the sparks dissolved. "Now you give it a try."

Sora felt the energy in his very being. Holding the Keyblade with both hands, he pointed it at the wall and willed his mana to flow through his arms and into the Keyblade. He projected the energy out of the tip and willed it to spark into a ball of fire. "Fire!" he invoked. A ball of fire shot out of the tip, just like the one that Donald had cast.

Kara and Goofy clapped. Sora stared at the point where the fireball had exploded in amazement. "I just used magic," he muttered. He laughed. "I just used magic!" Caught in the rush of his achievement, he cast the spell again. He spun around, firing in different directions.

"Watch where you shoot that thing!" Donald complained and he and Goofy ducked to avoid being hit by carelessly-launched Fire spells. The generally-invulnerable Kara made no such efforts, but she did try to tell Sora to calm down. Without thinking of where he was aiming, Sora spun around and cast a fireball, only to recoil in horror when the fireball flew toward Kara. It struck her in the arm, and she collapsed to the ground, screaming in pain.

"Kara!" Sora shouted. He dismissed the Keyblade and ran to her side, followed by Donald and Goofy. He grimaced when he saw the burned flesh. "Oh, no. Kara, I'm so sorry!" He reached into his pocket and fumbled for a potion.

"Allow me," Donald said. He raised his staff into the air. "Heal!" he called out. A thin garland materialized over Kara, and a green mist rained down on her, coalescing over her wound. Before their eyes, her skin repaired itself, and the only sign that the incident had even taken place was the singed edge on her shirt. Kara's screams died down and she started to breathe evenly, the pain fading away entirely. In fact, she felt refreshed. She pushed herself up into a sitting position.

Sora breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank goodness. Are you okay?" he asked.

Kara examined her arm and poked it, confirming that it was as good as new. "I'm fine," she said. "Thanks, Donald." She continued to study her arm, confused. "I thought I couldn't be hurt on these worlds," she mused.

"I guess you're not invulnerable to magic," Donald surmised. "Which means you have to be careful." He shot a glare at Sora, indicating that his warning was directed at him just as much if not more than Kara.

Sora scratched the back of his neck sheepishly, feeling ashamed of what he had done. "I'm sorry. I just got so excited at using magic, and I got careless."

Donald grumbled, then let out a sigh. He really could not hold it against Sora. After all, he had done the same thing when he had started learning magic. Several times with different spells, in fact. He could not fault him for getting excited, especially for one so young. But he could make sure that he learns so that he does better.

"Just keep your head on straight next time," he advised.

Sora nodded. "Okay." He offered Kara his hand and helped her to her feet. "So, what was that spell you just used to heal Kara?"

"It's called Cure. And before you ask, no, I don't think I can teach it to you yet. For starters, it would be best to have a better grasp on controlling your mana. More pressingly, you just depleted a large portion of your energy. We're done with magic lessons for now. You'll need to wait until you're recharged."

Sora deflated. No more magic lessons? "Okay. But how do I recharge?" he asked.

"Don't worry about it. You'll just absorb it from the aether around you," Donald explained.

"Huh. Cool."

"So, Sora, how about we get back to training?" Goofy suggested, holding his practice sword up.

Sora smiled and retrieved his own practice sword.

Kara ran her finger along the singed edge of her shirt sleeve, poking it through a hole that an ember had burned into it. "I hope I don't have to worry about too much of this. I don't have any other clothes," she lamented.

Donald waved his hand as if it were a non-issue. "Aw, don't worry. We have something down the hall that can fix that up," he told her.

"Really?" Kara asked, intrigued.

Donald nodded. "Of course. Follow me. Some more serious damage will take a few hours to repair, but a little burn like that should be fixed within half an hour, with some protective buffing as change."

They left to get Kara's shirt repaired while Goofy set to instructing Sora on his form.


	8. Down the Rabbit Hole

**Chapter 8**

**Down the Rabbit Hole**

The siren went off to signal that the Gummi Ship was approaching the target world. Everyone returned to the cockpit and retook their seats, Kara wearing her freshly-repaired shirt, as Donald guided the ship into a position that safely orbited the world. Sora and Kara regarded it with bemusement, at first glance thinking that it looked like a giant strawberry. Upon closer inspection, they saw that the ovoid surface of the world had a red-and-pink checkerboard design with hearts of the opposing colors in each square. A few houses were visible all around the surface of the world, and a castle stood at the (from their perspective) top of the world. There was an expansive hedge maze around the castle, with a large archway shaped like the top half of a heart at the entrance.

"Are a lot of worlds like this?" Kara asked.

"Hmm… This seems different from most of the ones we've been to," Goofy replied. "I don't think I'm familiar with this one."

"So, this is all our first new world together. Sounds like fun," Sora said, a goofy grin on his face.

Donald nodded. "Okay, then. Sora, expand the world on the map and find us a place to beam down."

"Beam down?" Sora parroted. "We're not going to park?"

Donald shook his head. "If it's not a commonly-known world to the point that we don't even know about it, then it wouldn't have accommodations for most forms of world travel," he explained. "And as it stands, Gummi Ships are a relatively recent development, so there aren't many worlds that do have a place to dock this. So, we'll have to leave the ship in orbit and beam ourselves down."

"Okay…" Sora tapped on the world's icon on the radar, and it expanded into a render of the world ahead of them. A text box appeared saying "UNMAPPED – SIGNAL UNDEFINED". After a moment of scanning and loading, a green dot appeared over one of the houses. He tapped the green dot. "Like this?" he asked.

Donald moved the radar so that he could see it. "Yup. Strange. Even with most first visits, the radar usually picks up more nodes. Oh, well. Kara, activate the transporter and hit Disembark."

Kara scrolled through the commands on her display and found the ones relevant to the transporter. Figuring out how they were meant to work, she inputted the commands. When she hit the button to activate the transporter, a white circle lit up on the floor behind them.

"Alright. Let's step inside, and it'll take us down," Donald said.

They all climbed out of their seats and stepped inside the circle. After a few seconds, the light shot up and enveloped them. They felt energy course through them, and then they vanished from the ship.

* * *

They had expected to appear on solid ground once the light had faded, but there was no floor to be seen. When they rematerialized, gravity took hold and they fell through what appeared to be a purple-walled cylindrical passage with squares indented in a pattern. Kara felt the urge to fly, but then Sora, Donald and Goofy would still be falling, so she let herself fall. A few minutes passed, and they wondered how long they would be falling. They noticed that the squares were not passing by them as fast as before, and they realized that their descent was slowing. As it reached the point that they were falling at only a few feet per second, they could now make out the furniture and decorations on the wall. Every few feet, pressed up against the rounded wall, some of which appearing to simply be floating in place, they saw clocks, tables, sofas, portraits, and even fireplaces.

Feeling as though he was gently floating down, Goofy positioned himself as if he were laying on his back. Sora, Kara and Donald looked around, wondering what they were going to come across when they landed… assuming they _did_ land.

Donald looked down every few minutes, and breathed a sigh of relief when, finally, a checkered tile floor was within sight. The floor drew closer, and they knew that their descent was finally going to come to an end. Right before they touched down, they felt gravity retake its proper hold, and when they landed it felt as though they had jumped a few feet and dropped back down. Goofy, on the other hand, was still lying on his back, so when he felt the jolt of normalized gravity, he tumbled over and landed on his stomach with a crash. Sora and Kara winced and withheld giggles.

A moment later, something else landed from above. It appeared to be an anthropomorphic albino rabbit who was shorter than Donald. He wore a red waistcoat and a pair of pince nez glasses. He took a large gold pocket watch out of his waistcoat, jumped in fright when he examined the face, and broke into a sprint.

"Oh, my fur and whiskers! I'm late! I'm late! I'm late!" the rabbit exclaimed as he ran down the hall in a zig-zagging fashion. "Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear! I'm here, I should be there. I'm late, I'm late, I'm late! The queen, she'll have my head for sure!"

"Where did he come from?" Kara asked, bemused. She looked up. "Was he above us the whole time?"

Goofy pushed himself to his feet. "Gawrsh. I wonder where he's going," he mused.

"Only one way to find out," Sora said. He ran after the rabbit, forcing his friends to run after him.

"The way he was talking about a queen, I'm not sure if I want to know," Donald remarked. Nevertheless, he followed after him.

They stopped at a door and opened it, only to find a slightly smaller door behind it. There was another smaller door behind that, which opened to finally reveal a darkened alcove. They stepped through the doorway, all crouching aside from Donald, and pushed open another door that was a few feet ahead, hidden in shadow.

Stepping through a dark pink door that was larger and of a more rounded shape than the previous doors, they entered a cube-shaped room with pink walls, which seemed rather small. There was a green bed in one corner, and a fireplace and chimney combo was set against the wall on the right, with perplexing proportions that made it seem too small for a fireplace, but a normal-sized stovetop was built into its left side. Candlewick lamps hung from the ceiling, and a painting hung on one wall. Certain pieces of furniture and decorations seemed painted on in one view, such as a table and chair flat on the floor, what appeared to be the opening of a flower pot in the corner to their right, and a book on the table in the corner to their right.

The most curious thing of all, though, was the tiny wooden door at the bottom of the wall opposite to them. The White Rabbit, now only a few inches tall, somehow, ran across the floor and through the door.

They knelt down and leaned in to get a good look at the tiny door, which Sora noticed was just big enough to fit his head through, if he were to comb his hair down. Strangely, the brass doorknob appeared to be designed with a face, with closed eyes above the knob and what seemed to be a mouth below. "How did he get so small?" he asked.

The doorknob opened its eyes. "No, you're simply too big," it said matter-of-factly.

Sora, Kara, Donald, and Goofy jumped back in shock. "It talked!" Donald exclaimed.

The Doorknob yawned. "Must you be so loud? You woke me up," it complained.

"Good morning," Goofy said cheerfully.

"Good _night_! I need a bit more sleep."

"Wait! What do we have to do to grow small?" Sora asked.

"Why don't you try the bottle?" it suggested. This advice was met with confused stares. "Over there."

They turned around to see what it was referring to. A cloud of smoke burst from the floor and the painted-on table and chair turned into real furniture. Two mason jars materialized on top of the table, right next to each other.

"Was that there when the rabbit came through?" Kara asked. Sora shrugged. They stood around the table and examined the bottles. They each had a label wrapped around it, one blue and one orange. The blue one, which contained a purple liquid, had a picture that seemed to depict, from left to right, a big tree becoming smaller. The orange one, which contained a dark red liquid, had the same image in reverse. They each had a tag that read "Drink Me", but the blue one had it written in large print while the orange one had it written in small print.

"Do you think he drank this one?" Sora asked, holding up the blue jar. Normally, he would not automatically believe that drinking something would cause him to change size, but after using magic of his own and after everything he had seen in the last half hour, he was a little bit more inclined to just go with it.

"Gawrsh, do you really think we should drink that?" Goofy asked uncertainly.

Kara took the bottle, popped the lid off, and wafted its aroma. She shrugged. "Doesn't smell bad. It actually smells like grape juice."

"Let me see that!" Donald demanded. Kara held it out to him, and he summoned his staff and waved it over the jar, detecting any anomalies. "Well, there definitely is some magic in this, and I don't detect any bacteria, but…" he trailed off, still unsure of the wisdom of drinking from the jar.

"Well, only one way to be sure." With that, Kara took a sip, to Donald and Goofy's shock, and set the jar back down on the table. "It tastes kinda funny," she mused. Right after saying that, she shrank down, becoming so small that she vanished from sight.

"She's gone!" Goofy gasped. He, Sora and Donald looked around frantically to find her. Kara, now only a few inches tall, flew up in front of their faces, getting their attention and letting them know that she was alright.

"It worked," she told them. They laughed at her size, and she responded by putting her hands on her hips in mock indignance. Determining that the potion was indeed safe, they each took a sip. Goofy noticed that, even after they had their drinks, the jar still appeared full. The three of them shrank until they were at a size proportional to their usual stature relative to Kara. Kara descended to join them on the floor.

Heartless appeared, their numbers including Shadows and Soldiers as well as two new types. They were small, floating creatures with conical bodies and flared collars with jagged edges. They had spherical black heads with yellow dots for eyes, much like the Shadows and Soldiers, they wore yellow conical hats with jagged edges and curled antennae, and they each had a pair of thin crow's feet below their bodies. Heartless emblems were emblazoned on their chests, and the only way to tell one type from the other was the fact that one type had a red body while the other had a blue body.

Sora, Donald and Goofy summoned their weapons, and Kara put her fists up. One of the red Heartless spat a fireball at Sora, but he swatted it away like he had done with Leon's blast. The blue Heartless shot a set of ice crystals that spread out in multiple directions. Goofy blocked the direct hit with his shield while Kara flew around to avoid the rest.

"These ones are elementals," Donald noted. "I think they'll absorb the same spells they cast and use them to fuel themselves. But the thing about elementals is that they're extra weak to the opposing magic. Okay, Sora. How about some target practice? Use Fire on the blue ones. I'll freeze the red ones. He demonstrated by hitting one of the red creatures with a spell that was very similar to the one that the blue Heartless had cast. Goofy charged at one of the Soldiers and struck it with his shield. Kara targeted the Shadows and took one out with a single punch. She went after another, but it flattened itself and sank into the floor. Kara stomped on it, but that seemed to have no effect as it crawled under her foot and rose up behind her. It scratched at her, but it withdrew its hand after bouncing off of her leg, shaking the pain out of it. Kara whirled around and slugged it in the face, destroying it.

Sora watched the Blue Rhapsody float around, following its pattern. He pointed the Keyblade at it and shouted "Fire!" A fireball shot out of the tip and made a direct hit, sending the Blue Rhapsody rolling backward. It righted itself and, enraged, blasted ice shards at him. He dodged the central shard, but stumbled into the path of one of the spreading shards. It exploded into a fine mist on contact, though he still felt the force from the collision, and he felt an intense cold in his gut surrounding where it had hit. Gritting his teeth to keep them from chattering, he steeled himself and aimed again. He charged another Fire spell up, feeling warmth return to his stomach as his mana flowed through it. He cast the spell, and then cast it again. With that third Fire spell, the Heartless exploded into dark smoke.

"Good job, Sora!" Donald commended as he destroyed his target with a blast of the icy magic. When his back was turned, however, the other Red Nocturne blasted him in the tail with a fireball, causing him to jump up and down and scream in pain.

The Red Nocturne floated around him and prepared to fire again, but Kara ran up to the scene and blew her freeze breath at it. Frost formed over its body and its shadowy essence quivered. Immobilized, it dropped to the floor, dissolving as it hit and scattered the frost. She went to Donald's side and blew the flame on his tail feathers out.

Sora and Goofy vanquished the rest of the Heartless, and the party reconvened. After taking sips of Potion to heal any damage done, they went over to the door to try to follow the White Rabbit. Kara tried to thank the Doorknob for its assistance, but it was snoring.

"Gawrsh, he's asleep. Should we really disturb him?" Goofy asked.

"What?! How are we supposed to get anywhere otherwise?" Donald complained. Goofy shushed him, but he only shook his head defiantly.

Wondering if there was another way, Kara looked around the room, using her x-ray vision to scan past the furniture. Her gaze fell on a rectangular hole in the base of the wall below the head of the bed. Increasing the intensity of her vision, she saw that the hole extended into a passage straight through the wall, and by reducing the power of her vision, she saw that the frame blocked a significant portion of the hole.

"There's a way out behind the bed," she told her friends. As they turned to see what she was referring to, she slipped under the bed frame and tried to lift it up from below, but it would not budge. Confused, she tried pushing it from the inner frame to drag it away from the wall, but it still did not move. Perplexed by the situation as they heard her grunt from the failing effort, Sora crossed his arms, Donald tapped his foot, and Goofy scratched his forehead. Frustrated, Kara flew out from under the bed and kicked the frame. To her surprise, she actually felt it give, and they all watched as the bed slid into the wall, flattening itself up as it became an image like what the table and chair had appeared to be.

Kara landed, and Sora, Donald and Goofy ran up to join her. "That was weird," Sora remarked.

"After all this, I guess we know what to expect," Goofy mused.

"Yeah. Expect anything, no matter how strange," Donald agreed.

"Well, let's see where this leads," Kara said. They walked through the passage, the way ahead visible by a light from the opposite end. When they reached the end of the tunnel, they found themselves outside, on a path flanked by bushes as high as walls.

"Wow. I wonder where this goes," Sora said.

"Let's stick together. We don't want to get separated and lose our way," Donald advised.

They walked through the hedge maze, doing their best to keep track of their route. Heartless appeared every so often, but they defeated them, the task becoming easy as they figured out the pattern and Sora got the hang of magic. Kara largely left the elemental Heartless to Sora and Donald, but occasionally blasted a Red Nocturne with freeze breath and annihilated a Blue Rhapsody with heat vision. They still took hits, but Sora gradually learned to keep a better eye on his surroundings, staying mindful of every enemy, even the ones he left to his friends, so that he was not blindsided. He remembered sparring matches where he went up against Tidus, Wakka and Selphie at once, and he remembered parrying Tidus' attacks while avoiding Selphie's jump rope and keeping an eye out for Wakka throwing his volleyball (which was rare when the other two were in such close range but still a risk), so he had already learned to keep track of everything around him as best he could. This time, he had to continually remind himself not to relax now that he had his superpowered alien sister, a powerful wizard, and a highly-skilled knight, as their targets could still turn on him.

They continued through the winding hedge maze, hoping that they were not getting themselves lost. They soon came upon a wide space filled with rose bushes. Drops of a red liquid dotted the grass below the bushes, and a closer examination suggested that the roses were covered in red paint. They thought it was strange, but they shrugged it off for the moment as they realized that it only meant that this was somebody's garden, and they might come across their residence soon, and they might then find out more about the world.

Finally, a heart-shaped archway came into view, and it appeared as though they were approaching the hedge maze's exit. Looking up above the arch, they saw a castle in the background. It was rather nondescript, indistinct from any medieval castle that Sora and Kara had seen in books and movies, which was an interesting shift after the bizarre nature of the room that they had entered this world in. Looking ahead, it appeared as though the exit was barricaded by a gate made up of large brown rectangles, but they noticed that these rectangles had red arms and legs. As they drew closer, they noticed that the rectangles looked like the backs of playing cards, that each card held a crimson spear in its hand, and they all had upside-down red hearts where their heads ought to be.

As they came up to the archway, two of the creatures turned to see who had come up, confirming with a view of the front of their bodies that they were giant playing cards. They had Caucasian faces, but only the cheeks and mouths were exposed, the outer parts covered by the same red parts that covered the backs of their heads and their noses covered by red heart shapes. Although their eyes were not visible, assuming they did have eyes, it seemed as though they could see normally. When they had gotten a good look at the newcomers, they sidestepped to allow them to pass.

Sora, Kara, Donald, and Goofy stepped out of the maze into what appeared to be an open-air courtroom. Along the front wall, there were more playing cards, although some were more reminiscent of Spades rather than Hearts, which held axes rather than spears. At the back of the clearing, set up against the castle wall, was the judge's bench, in which sat a portly woman who had a perpetual scowl on her face. A collection of strange characters sat in the audience pews off to the side. In the center of the clearing, there was an elevated witness stand, and there was a girl, clearly younger than Sora and Kara, standing on it.

There was a towering podium to the left of the judge's bench. The White Rabbit ran up the spiraling stairs that led up to the podium and blew into a trumpet. "Court is now in session!" he announced.

* * *

**Don't you hate how you went through all that trouble to get small enough to go through the door but you couldn't because the Doorknob fell asleep? I considered just letting the party go through, but then I would have had to have them follow the same path Alice went in the movie, and I wanted to just take them to the next scene, so I worked that bed puzzle in. Also, did anyone else think that the world icon for Wonderland looked kind of like a strawberry?**

**Also, asking for suggestions: Should I include or exclude the Navi-G pieces? Could I manage to work them into the lore, or should I just ignore them and say they're not important?**


	9. The Queen's Way

**Chapter 9**

**The Queen's Way**

The girl gasped. "I'm on trial?! But why?" she asked, speaking with an English accent. She was definitely a child, Sora thought. She had fair skin, blue eyes, and long, thick blonde hair that was tied at the top with a black bow. She wore a blue dress with a white pinafore, white stockings, and black Mary Jane shoes. While Sora, Kara, Donald, and Goofy had little familiarity with the world, by comparing her to the colorful cast of characters in the audience and around the clearing, it seemed that she was the odd one out.

"Her majesty, the Queen of Hearts, presiding," the White Rabbit announced, passing the metaphorical baton to the plump woman in the judge's seat. The clearly-ill-tempered queen had fair skin with a reddish tint, brown eyes, and black hair tied up into a small bun at the back. She wore a black and red gown with black-and-yellow diagonal stripes at the front of the skirt and a raised white collar at the neck, a pair of matching gold earrings, a red ribbon tied around her bun, and a golden crown on top of her head. She held a red heart-shaped fan in her right hand, which she used to fan herself every so often.

"This girl is the culprit. There's no doubt about it," the Queen said bitterly. "And the reason is… because I say so, that's why!"

"Charming," Kara remarked sarcastically.

"But that is so unfair!" the girl protested.

"Well, have you anything to say in your defense?" the Queen asked.

"Of course. I've done absolutely nothing wrong," the girl argued. "You may be a queen, but that doesn't give you the right to be so… so mean!" Shocked by her defiance, the audience and the card soldiers gasped. The White Rabbit looked around fearfully.

"SILENCE! You dare defy me?" the Queen shouted, slamming her fists on the bench. The girl recoiled in fear of the large woman's temper.

Sora looked to his friends, concerned about the trial that was going on before them. "Hey, guys, we should help her out," he said.

"Yeah, but…" Donald began uncertainly, not sure how to explain the dilemma to Sora.

"We shouldn't muddle with the laws of other worlds," Goofy argued.

"Meddle!" Donald corrected.

"Right," Goofy confirmed.

"What do you mean?" Kara asked.

"As society evolved on different worlds, local governments have developed their legal systems in different ways, so what's okay and what's procedure on one world might be very different on others," Donald explained. "A general rule of thumb is that when we go to another world, we don't let our perspective of law affect how we deal with local situations, and we don't try to impose our own attitudes on the people. Granted, some world governments ignore that rule, but umbrella governments and interworldly organizations try to enforce it."

As they were discussing matters, the queen seemed to reach a verdict without a jury vote (or even a jury) or listing the charges. "This court finds the defendant guilty as charged!" she announced. The girl gasped in horror.

"But we can't just ignore this," Kara argued. "She's a kid! She can't be older than ten. There's no way she did… whatever the crime is."

As if to clear up Kara's confusion, but actually to declare the sentence, the queen piped up again. "For the crime of assault and attempted theft of my heart…" Sora gasped, realizing what had happened. "…OFF WITH YOUR HEAD!"

The card soldiers raised their spears and axes in anticipation. "No! No! Oh, please!" the girl begged.

"Hold it right there!" Sora shouted, charging past the soldiers in front of him. Kara, Donald and Goofy followed him, none of them willing to let the innocent girl suffer any further.

"Who are you? How dare you interfere with my court?" the Queen of Hearts asked, annoyed at the intrusion.

"Excuse me, but we know who the real culprit is," Sora said.

"Yeah. It's the Heartless," Goofy added.

"Yes. I-It is quite heartless of her to do such a thing," the White Rabbit said. Kara wondered if he was genuinely missing the point of what they were saying or if he was trying to stay on the queen's good side by sticking with her narrative.

"No, it's… She's not the one you're looking for," Kara clarified.

"That's nonsense. Have you any proof?" the queen asked, skeptical.

Sora and Kara deflated. Donald and Goofy gulped. Where were they going to get proof? The girl let out a dismayed sigh.

The next thing any of them knew, the girl had been dragged into a birdcage that was attached to the side of the judge's bench and locked in.

"Well, that didn't go the way we'd hoped," Sora remarked.

"Normally, I would have you charged for disrupting my court proceedings," the queen said. "But you seem to have great conviction in overturning my conviction, so I will give you a chance to gather your 'proof'. Bring me evidence of Alice's innocence. Fail, and it's off with all of your heads!"

Kara nodded. "We understand, your Eminence," she replied. She turned to her friends. "Any idea where we should start?"

"Hmm… You know, if we're gonna prove her innocence, we should know where she's been," Goofy suggested.

Reasoning that it was a good place to start, they walked over to the cage where the girl, Alice, stood, looking despondent. "Hello," Sora greeted, offering a friendly wave.

Alice looked up and offered a soft smile. "Hello. Who might you be?" she asked.

"I'm Sora. This is my sister, Kara."

"I'm Goofy, and that there's Donald."

Alice curtsied. "Pleased to meet you, though I do wish it were under better circumstances. I'm sorry you got mixed up in this nonsense."

"Why are you even on trial in the first place?" Kara asked.

Alice shrugged. "I should like to know the very same thing. Apparently, I was guilty from the moment I took the stand!"

"That's crazy!" Sora exclaimed, earning himself a dirty look from the Queen of Hearts. He took a breath to calm down. "So, you don't look like you're from around here. Where are you from?"

"I'm from London. It's nothing like this place, this Wonderland. You see, I saw that White Rabbit and, curious, I followed him to this mysterious rabbit hole. When I tried to peek inside, I tumbled in head over heels. I ran into all sorts of strange characters, then finally I found myself here."

Kara crossed her arms as she wondered about what Alice had said. "You came to this world… through a rabbit hole?" she asked.

"Say, maybe it's the same one we fell through when we got off of our ship," Goofy guessed.

"So, what? We dropped in the middle of an interdimensional portal?" Donald mused. "You know what? Forget it. We need to find evidence to prove Alice's innocence."

"You're right. Can you tell us where you were before you found yourself here?" Sora asked.

Alice stuck her arm out of the cage and pointed to a line of trees past a field with flamingos and hedgehogs. "I came out from that forest," she said.

Sora nodded. "Thanks. We'll get you out of here," he promised.

"Oh, please. Thank you," Alice replied. As she watched her new friends leave, she shivered. She had the strange feeling that something was watching her, something dark.

* * *

Sora, Kara, Donald, and Goofy walked through the Lotus Forest, finding the environment to be quite odd. Everything around them seemed to be quite large, from the trees to the mushrooms. They quickly remembered that they had shrunk down, so they were small rather than everything else simply being oddly large, but they then recalled that the Queen of Hearts' castle and garden were of a size proportional to them. They ultimately concluded that, however one looked at it, it was a strange world. What had Alice called it? "Wonderland"? Yes, that seemed quite appropriate a name.

Sora let out a groan in frustration. "Where are we supposed to find evidence of Alice's innocence?" he asked aloud, kicking a giant tree stump.

"Yeah, how can we prove that it was the Heartless?" Goofy wondered. "We don't know that much about the Heartless, so we don't know what clues they would leave behind."

"We can't just look for something that's out of place," Kara remarked, gesturing to the enlarged flora around them.

Suddenly, something resembling a purple cat head with a massive grin appeared in front of her, bounced from side to side, then vanished as quickly as it had appeared. "What the Torg?" she blurted out. The grinning head appeared again in front of Donald, then vanished. The four heard a voice echo around them as it sang, "_Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe; all mimsy were the borogroves, and the mome raths outgrabe._" The head floated around before vanishing again. Finally, the eyes and toothy grin appeared just above the stump. The rest of the head materialized around the eyes and mouth. A chubby cat body that had a purple and pink striped pattern and a bushy striped tail appeared as well, standing on top of the head on one foot. When all eyes had turned to it, the body hopped off of the head, picked it up, and tossed it into the air. The head bounced off of its shoulders a few times before settling into place.

"Wak! Who are you?" Donald asked, startled.

"'Who' indeed?" the cat teased. "Poor Alice. Soon to lose her head, and she's not guilty of a thing."

"Hey, if you know who the culprit is, tell us!" Sora demanded.

The purple cat giggled. "A Cheshire Cat has all the answers, but doesn't always tell," he said cryptically. "The answer, the culprit, the cat all lie in darkness." With that, the enigmatic Cheshire Cat disappeared.

"Wait!" Sora pleaded.

"They've already left the forest," the cat's voice echoed, even though he was still nowhere to be seen. "I won't say which way. By the way, they left some gifts on their way out, four in all. Go whichever way you like. But either way, they all go the Queen's way." Kara scowled at the mention of the Queen of Hearts.

When the cat's voice fell silent, Donald turned to his companions. "Do you think we can trust him?" he asked.

The Cheshire Cat reappeared on the stump, lying down this time rather than standing up. "To trust or not to trust? I trust you'll decide!" he said, startling Donald again. After saying all that he needed to, he swung his tail around, and his body vanished as if the tail had wiped it away. The tail then shrank upon itself and disappeared as well.

"So, the Heartless left gifts, huh? I wonder what we'll find," Goofy mused.

"Kara, can you find anything with your x-ray vision?" Sora suggested.

"Let me see." Kara activated her power and scanned past the trees, the tall grass, and the rocks. She saw what appeared to be passageways, but could not identify any depth to the tunnels. She also saw two pink boxes, and on the ground past some grass and mushrooms she saw something that appeared to glow. "I see two pink boxes: one up in the trees and the other on the ground past that big one. I also see something else in that direction." She pointed to where she had seen the glowing object.

"Okay. Let's split up and find the evidence," Sora said.

"No! We'll all just get lost!" Donald argued.

"You three go find the boxes and back each other up if you run into trouble. I'll check out the other thing," Kara decided.

"Alright," Sora said, agreeing to the plan.

"Good luck, Kara," Goofy said. They split up, Sora, Donald and Goofy heading in one direction to find the box on the ground, and Kara heading off to find the glowing object.

They had not gone far before they were beset by Heartless. Sora and Goofy fought the Shadows and Soldiers while Donald targeted the Red Nocturnes and Blue Rhapsodies. Sora also took out a Blue Rhapsody after defeating a Soldier.

After they cleared out that batch of Heartless, with Donald finishing the fight by destroying a Red Nocturne with the spell that shot ice crystals, Sora turned to the duck mage. "What is that spell that you use to take out the fire guys?" he asked.

"It's called Blizzard," Donald told him. He noticed Sora staring at him, confused. "It's named after a snowstorm. The ancient wizards who came up with the spell thought it was a good term to associate with the freezing cold effects of the spell."

"Oh. I think I have heard of those. I'm from an island, so we don't really get snow," Sora admitted. "So, can you teach me the spell?"

"Well, since you caught onto the Fire spell pretty quickly, sure, I can teach you Blizzard. This spell has the opposite effect of Fire, but it's not really much harder to learn. It was originally used to put out wildfires, which is why the crystals spread out," Donald explained. "Okay. Now that the basics on the effects are out of the way, let me teach you how to cast the spell. Summon your Keyblade. Feel the mana flow through you. Now, think of something intensely cold. Find your target. Think of how you want it to feel that same cold, and how you don't want it to escape from your attack. Then, you work the magic."

Sora did as Donald said. He had not felt severe cold much in his life. For the most part, the coldest he had felt was standing in front of the open freezer at home. However, he did have a suitable experience to draw upon: the Blue Rhapsody's Blizzard spell that had hit him. Rather than just heat leaving through his skin, he had felt truly _cold_. That was the sensation that he would put into the spell. With that figured out, he pointed the Keyblade forward, channeled his mana, and cast the spell. Seven ice crystals shot out from the weapon's tip, one flying straight while the others flew at angles in a snowflake pattern. The top, left and center crystals dissolved into mist after flying fifty feet, but the bottom and right crystals frosted the ground and the bark of a tree.

"Good going, Sora!" Goofy cheered.

"You're a natural!" Donald commended.

"Thanks," Sora said, grinning. He took a moment to let the swell of pride pass, then he took a breath. "Okay. Let's go prove Alice's innocence."

Kara pushed her way through the brush, ignoring remarks from a bed of talking flowers that complained about "another weed". When Heartless appeared, she took out the Red Nocturnes and Blue Rhapsodies with freeze breath and heat vision first before taking the others out with punches and kicks. With the Heartless gone, she continued her search, using x-ray vision to locate her prize again and continue in the right direction. Soon, she could see a green glow shining through a curtain of grass. As she moved to pass the threshold, she felt strange. Queasy, like she had been on an uncomfortable aircar ride. She was confused, noting that she had not felt nauseous since that first speedboat trip to Hopena after she was recovered from her crashed ship (she assumed that her developing powers prevented her from nausea the same way that she had never gotten sick since her arrival), but she pushed the thought to the side and pushed through the grass.

The glowing object immediately caught her eye. She tilted her head quizzically as she stared at it. It was a crystal, around the size of a baseball. It was green in color, though it was a lighter green than an emerald, and it glowed the same color. She could not help but think that it seemed out of place even in the forest in Wonderland. Was this at all related to the Heartless? Something told her that it was not, so she wondered what it really was. However, she had trouble thinking clearly as she was beset by a strong headache.

Her vision blurred, and she stumbled and collapsed to the ground. "What…?" she groaned as she felt her muscles ache all over her body. She tried to push herself to her feet, but it felt as though her nerves were on fire. She dropped flat, and as she did so, her gaze fell upon her outstretched hand. Much to her horror, she saw that the veins on the back of her hand had turned a bright green, the same shade as the glowing rock.

_What is that thing?_ she wondered. A blob of darkness formed on the ground near her and expanded upward into a Shadow. She groaned, too weak to fight the Heartless. She wondered if whatever the rock was doing to her meant that the Shadow would hurt her now.

* * *

Seeing a pink box next to a four-foot-tall mushroom, Sora stooped down and opened it. Peeking in, he saw a patch of grass in the courtroom with a set of prints shaped like a Shadow Heartless' feet.

"This is the evidence?" Sora asked, surprised. "How did it get in this box?"

"This place is weird enough already. I don't want to drive myself crazy bothering over every strange little thing," Donald remarked.

"Good call," Sora agreed. He closed the box and picked it up, only to quickly realize that he had nowhere to put it. "Uh, what should I do with this?"

"Here. Let me hold onto it," Donald suggested. Sora gave him the box, and he slipped it into his pocket. It did not even make a bulge in his pants, as if there was nothing there. "Our clothes have been enchanted up to be able to fit anything in our pockets. So we don't have to worry about carrying these things around."

"Cool. Can you do that to my clothes?" Sora asked.

"Maybe when we're back on the ship," Donald replied.

More Heartless appeared: some Soldiers, a Red Nocturne, a Blue Rhapsody, and a massive creature with a round body, thick arms, large feet, and a disproportionately small head. Its head resembled the Soldiers' and it wore similar shoes, but its arms were blue, and it wore a purple vest and a blue chest plate that was secured with yellow ropes. It had a metal shackle on each wrist with a few links of a chain dangling from the rings, as if it had broken free from imprisonment by sheer strength. Its vest and chest plate had a raised metal collar, and it wore a metal hat that was similar to the Red Nocturne's, but without the jagged edges.

Sora practiced Blizzard on the Red Nocturne while Donald took out the Blue Rhapsody, and they turned to the Soldiers. Goofy charged at the Large Body, but as he slammed his shield into its armored stomach, he simply bounced off harmlessly. The Heartless did not seem to feel a thing. Goofy hit the Heartless again to double-check, with the same result. The Large Body responded by striking him with its arm, lazily swinging its whole body from side to side to deliver the blow.

"Goofy!" Sora shouted. He finished off his target and attacked the Large Body from behind. It staggered from the blow, feeling the damage. He blinked as he understood what had happened. "Goofy! It's weak from behind!" The Large Body turned around and, in the same motion, slugged him with enough force to send him tumbling backward.

"Got it, Sora!" Goofy called back. Since the Heartless' back was to him, Goofy took the opportunity to deliver several shield punches and an extended spinning attack to its weak point. After he had dealt several blows, the Large Body turned around abruptly and stomped its feet angrily. It gave off a faint purple glow, as if it were burning with rage. It patted its stomach and then charged at Goofy, knocking him on his back. When he pushed himself to his feet, it slugged him, sending him flying through the trees.

"Goofy!" Donald shouted. Enraged, he began shooting Fire spells at the Heartless while Sora attacked its now-exposed back. Donald noticed that the Heartless flinched from each of his spells in the same way, even the ones that veered off and hit its chest plate. _It's vulnerable to magic, even from the front!_ he realized. He continued attacking with his spells, shouting to keep its attention on him while Sora hit it from behind. Soon, the Large Body succumbed to the final hit and dissolved into dark smoke.

* * *

Goofy flew through the air and crashed far away from Sora and Donald. Groaning, he pushed himself to his feet. Looking around, he saw a group of Shadows before his gaze settled on Kara, who laid prone on the ground. "Hiya, Kara. Any luck?" he greeted. He then noticed that she looked rather ill, and the veins on her arms, legs, neck, and forehead were glowing green. "Gawrsh, are you alright?" he asked, worried.

"The… green rock…" Kara groaned.

Goofy turned around and saw the glowing rock. He stared at it curiously for a moment before he determined that there was a connection between its green glow and Kara's green veins. Realizing that it was harming her somehow, he knew that he had to get rid of it. He looked around, wondering where he could hide it. He considered sticking it into his pocket, where it would vanish into its magically-expanded capacity, but he feared that it might contaminate the food and Potions somehow, so he discarded that idea. Figuring that there was only one option, he summoned his shield to his hands, knelt down, and dug a hole. When a Shadow drew near him or Kara, he turned from his task to destroy it, then went back to work. When the hole was nearly two feet deep, he carefully picked the rock up and dropped it into the hole, letting it roll down to the bottom. He then replaced the dirt, burying the rock completely.

Kara breathed a sigh of relief as the pain began to fade. She could no longer feel the rock's radiation, and she watched as the green faded away from her hands. Goofy offered his hand and helped her to her feet. "Thanks," she said. He took a Potion out of his pocket and gave it to her to drink, then led her through the forest while supporting her.

By the time they had reunited with Sora and Donald, Kara had regained most of her strength, and she was walking without help. They came upon their friends just as Sora and Donald were discussing going in search of Goofy.

"Hey. Glad to see you're alright, Goofy. Did you find anything helpful, Kara?" Sora greeted.

Kara shook her head. She and Goofy explained what had happened.

Sora gasped. "What? Are you alright?" Kara nodded. He breathed a sigh of relief. "Good. Well, if there's really something that can hurt you just by being near you, we need to be really careful."

"We found some evidence," Donald reported.

"Great. Nice. Now, there's another box up in the trees," Kara said. "Should I fly up and get it?"

Sora shook his head. "I think we should stick together, in case you find another green rock."

Kara nodded. "Okay. Let's go."

Sora climbed onto the four-foot mushroom, then jumped up and pulled himself onto a taller mushroom next to it. He jumped off of that and landed on a lily pad that grew out of a tree and appeared to be thick enough to support his weight. Kara, Donald and Goofy followed after him. They scanned around until they saw a pink box sitting on top of a bushy branch. Sora broke into a sprint and jumped off of the lily pad, clearing the distance and landing on another lily pad. He turned and jumped across to a bushy branch, then turned again, broke into a sprint, and jumped off of the ledge to the lily pad that was directly in front of the branch that the box was on. It was a large gap, and he jumped as far as he could, catching onto the lily pad with his hands. He pulled himself up onto the platform and climbed up to the branch. Kara, Donald and Goofy followed him, Kara even electing to get some exercise rather than fly the whole way. Donald did not make it the whole way, but Goofy caught him before he could fall back to the ground and pulled him up. Sora opened the box, and they all looked in to see a pair of black stalks that looked just like a Shadow's antennae.

"Did the other evidence look like this?" Kara asked, perplexed.

"It looked more like footprints in grass," Sora explained. He closed the lid and handed the box to Donald, who put it into his pocket.

"The Cheshire Cat said that there were two more pieces of evidence to find," Donald said. "Can you see them anywhere?"

Kara scanned the area with her x-ray vision, then shook her head. "None here. But I can see passages in some of the trees. I can't see where they go. They might be worth a look.

"Okay. Where did you see them?" Sora asked.

"On the other side of that tree," Kara answered, pointing to the large tree nearby.

"Do you think we can get there from up here?" Goofy asked.

"Well… There are some mushrooms that we can use to climb up on the other side," Kara said, checking with her x-ray vision.

"Alright, then. Let's go take a look," Sora said. They jumped down to the ground. Sora, Donald and Goofy somersaulted on landing to avoid being hurt. Kara led the others around the base of the tree until they found the giant mushrooms. They jumped up the mushrooms and up to a lily pad above them, walked across two more lily pads, and, seeing a hole in the tree that was large enough for them to walk through, stepped into the pitch-dark trunk.

They sensed that they hole really was a passage almost immediately, as they walked down what seemed to be a sort of hallway without walking into the other side of the tree. Kara reached her hands out to feel for any obstacles, and she soon rested her hands on a door. She pushed it open and stepped forward, dropping off of a ledge immediately. Sora shielded his eyes against the light that suddenly entered the hall, then jumped in surprise as he realized what had happened to Kara. He relaxed when he remembered that she can fly and that falling would not hurt her, so he stuck his head in to look around. To his surprise, he realized that the passage led into the Bizarre Room with the talking doorknob, except they were up near the ceiling. He looked down and saw that he was almost directly above the stove, though a little bit to the right. He grinned when he saw that there was a small pink box on top of the stove. Without hesitating, he dropped off of the ledge, throwing himself to the side so that he would land on the stove. He stooped down to pick the box up, stepping aside to allow Donald and Goofy to land on the stove as well.

"I wonder what'll be in here," he mused. Donald and Goofy leaned in close to get a good look at the box's contents. Sora opened the box. As soon as the lid was raised, their senses were assaulted by a bitter odor. Sora and Goofy immediately recoiled from the stench, but Donald was able to get a look into the box, where he saw a cloud of the same dark smoke that the Heartless dissolve into when they are slain, before Sora closed it.

"Well, might as well put that with the rest," Donald said. He took the box and stuck it in his pocket.

Kara floated up to their level. "Three down, one to go," Sora told her.

"Great. I'll see if the last one is in here, too," she replied. She flew around the room and quickly returned with another box. "This was on the faucet on the other side of the fireplace. It looks like we could have gotten to it through a door high up."

"Nice! Let's see what's inside," Sora said. Kara opened the lid and revealed a wooden surface, one of the same material as the benches and stands in the courtroom. The smooth, grained surface was disrupted by a set of three scratches cut into the wood, black dust embedded into the marks.

"Gawrsh, this must have been a Shadow Heartless," Goofy observed. "And it looks like it left some of its essence behind."

"All right! This will prove to the queen that Alice is innocent!" Sora cheered.

"Don't be so sure," a familiar voice interjected. They looked around until they saw the Cheshire Cat appear above them, hanging from a wall-mounted pot by a hind paw. "Alice may be innocent, but what about you?"

"What do you mean?" Sora asked, uneased by the cat's warning.

"I won't tell. But you'll want to play with a full deck if you're not going to stay out of the way. Because if the Queen gets her way…" His head dropped off of his shoulders and landed on the stove in front of the party. "Off with your head!" The Cat's body vanished, and his head faded away shortly after.

"Gawrsh, what do you think he meant?" Goofy asked.

"I don't know. But with a queen like that running the trial, we'd better be careful so things don't get worse than they already are," Donald replied.

"Well, we have all of the evidence, so we should head back to the castle," Sora said.

* * *

They made their way through the hedge maze again and returned to the castle, where the Queen of Hearts had been waiting impatiently. After reporting to one of the card soldiers in front of the judge's bench, Sora stepped up to the witness stand to make his case. Kara, Donald and Goofy stood behind him.

"It took you long enough," the queen complained. "Now, present what you have found." Donald took the boxes out of his pocket and set them on the ground between the stand and the bench. "Well, that's certainly a lot of evidence, but I'm still not impressed. Cards! Bring forth my evidence!"

One of the cards set another pink box down at the end of the row of evidence. Then, to the party's shock and confusion, the queen swatted her fan on the bench like a gavel, and the boxes fused into one box, then separated into five again, shuffling them about.

"Hmm… Checking all five boxes would be a waste of time. All right, then. Choose the one you wish to present. I'll decide who's guilty based on that evidence," the queen declared, smirking.

"What?! After all the trouble of collecting it?" Sora protested.

"You dare object? Then you will lose your head! Now, choose! One box!" the queen yelled.

"Don't worry. It's just one box that's a sham," Kara assured her brother. "I'm sure you'll pick the right one." Then, with a smirk, she added in a whisper: "And if she insists on persecuting us, we'll just bust out of here with Alice."

Sora smiled and nodded. He stepped down from the witness stand and judged the line of boxes. Four boxes contained proof that it was the Heartless that had attacked the queen, while one was a phony that would implicate either Alice or one of them. No pressure. Four to one odds. There was a greater chance of selecting a Heartless box, and then it would all be over. Probably. He looked at Alice, nervous about holding her fate in his hands, but she gave him a smile, showing that she had faith in him. He picked each box up to test their weight, then shook them and listened to the noise, but there was no difference between them. After determining that, he used the hard-tested method of eenie-meenie-miney-moe, much to Kara's amusement. Finally, he chose a box and stooped down to open it. "This one," he announced.

The queen nodded. "Now let's see who the real culprit is."

Sora took a deep breath, then lifted the lid. He had expected to see the clue that the Heartless had left behind and was considering how he was going to explain whatever he revealed to the court, but he realized that he did not have to. Rather than show what he had seen (or smelled) before, the box spat out an illusion of a Soldier Heartless, causing him to fall backward in surprise.

Fortunately for his dignity and his credibility in the eyes of the court, the queen and her guards did not notice his fumble, as they were too in shock at the phantom Soldier's appearance, which vanished a moment after it had materialized. "What in the world was that?" the queen asked, bewildered.

Smiling triumphantly, Sora stood up and addressed the queen. "That's your evidence. Alice is innocent," he told her.

The audience gasped. The White Rabbit looked around uncertainly. The queen growled, angered at the fact that these strangers had overturned her conviction. "Silence! I am the law here!" she shouted, banging on her bench with her fists. "Article 29: Anyone who defies the Queen is guilty!"

Kara momentarily forgot how to stand. "You've got to be kidding me," she complained.

"That's crazy!" Donald protested. The White Rabbit pulled out a scroll with laws written on it to prove that the article was indeed present.

"Seize them at once!" the Queen of Hearts demanded.

The card soldiers thumped the bottoms of their spears and axes against the ground, causing the witness stand and the White Rabbit's podium to disappear, throwing everyone upon them to the side. The audience booth stretched high up so that everyone seated was out of the way. A yellow stone tower with three wooden crank wheels materialized in the center of the courtroom. A heart card drew a red curtain over the cage holding Alice, then three spade cards turned the crank wheels, raising the cage high up. All the while, the army of card soldiers formed ranks around Sora, Kara, Donald, and Goofy.

"OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!" the queen yelled. On her order, the soldiers charged at the party. Sora, Donald and Goofy summoned their weapons while Kara put her fists up.

Sora stepped out of the way of a spear strike and struck the attacking card with the Keyblade. As he was a card, he flopped away around the weight of its falling spear. Goofy blocked an axe slice with his shield. Donald blasted a soldier with a Fire spell, the blast of the fireball's contact explosion sending two more soldiers flying. He turned around and blasted three more soldiers with a Blizzard spell. Kara used her super breath to send a heart card sailing over the hedge wall. She then punched a spade card hard enough to send him and three cards behind him flying back into the audience booth.

"So much for not interfering," Sora remarked.

"I guess we couldn't avoid it," Donald replied.

"We played by her rules, but she's bending them around because she feels like it. She's just a tyrant, and we shouldn't have to play her games," Kara said, catching an axe by the handle, ripping it out of its wielder's hand, driving the blade into the ground, and breaking it in two, then knocking the soldier down with a kick.

Goofy took three card soldiers out with a tornado attack, where he spun around on his toes and held his arms out in a T-pose, sliding around on his toes while striking his foes with the edge of his shield. As he wound down, a heart card tried to impale him with a spear, but Sora caught it in the teeth of the Keyblade and deflected it down to the ground. Goofy thanked him for the save, then punched the card soldier with his shield. A spade card swung his axe at Sora's neck, but the teen did a somersault, which Goofy had suggested would be a good way to avoid some attacks, and struck the card down when he got back to his feet.

One soldier brought his axe down on Kara's head, only for it to crack on impact as even her hair withstood the blow. She did not flinch, but turned and gave the soldier an annoyed glare. "I've had enough of this," she said. She spread her arms out wide, then clapped her hands together hard enough to create a shockwave through the air that launched all of the cards off of their feet. Sora, Donald and Goofy collapsed from the force, covering their ears to shield them from the booming noise of the clap. The Queen of Hearts lost her balance and fell backward and landed upside-down, her gown falling over her to reveal heart-print bloomers. While the card soldiers floated to the ground and her friends recovered from the ear-splitting noise of the clap, Kara flew up to Alice's cage and ripped the curtain off. Before she could rip the door off and take Alice out, she froze, staring into the cage in shock.

"What's wrong?" Sora asked, noticing his sister's hesitation.

"She's… gone," Kara replied. Her friends turned the crank wheels to lower the cage, then ran over to verify. True enough, the cage was completely empty. Alice was nowhere to be seen.


	10. Upside-Down

**Chapter 10**

**Upside-Down**

"What is going on? Where is the defendant?" the Queen of Hearts demanded once she had righted herself and a card soldier had explained what had happened. Her gaze fell upon the strangers that had interfered in her court. "You… This is all your doing!"

"What? No! How could we have?" Sora argued.

"She must've gotten kidnapped while we were fighting," Donald surmised.

"You fools!" the queen shouted, banging her fists on her desk. The card soldiers immediately stood at attention, quaking in fear of their temperamental liege. "Find the one who's behind this! I don't know how!" The cards nodded and scurried off in all directions. The audience booth lowered back to its original height. The queen turned to address them and the party. "You're all dismissed. We can't very well have a trial without a defendant."

"Uh, okay…" Kara was surprised that the queen was going to let them go just like that. But she was not going to argue. She would rather just wash her hands of the whole debacle and leave without any more trouble. She beckoned her friends to follow her, absently walking in the direction of the lotus forest. The audience members went their own separate ways, some heading toward the forest, others into the hedge maze, and the others in whatever other directions they cared to go.

"Where do you think she could have gone?" Goofy asked when they were all by themselves.

"Who knows? We've only seen a small part of this world, and we barely have any idea how to navigate that," Kara remarked.

"Let's go back to the forest," Sora suggested. "We might find more pathways, and someone might know where we could look."

"Well, that's the best idea we've got," Donald said.

They reentered the Lotus Forest and soon found themselves in the spot where they had first met the Cheshire Cat. Speaking of which…

A familiar voice echoed around them. "_Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe; all mimsy were the borogroves, and the mome raths outgrabe._" On "outgrabe", a flower opened its petals up and sneezed out a boulder. Sora, Kara and Goofy jumped back in surprise while Donald ducked as the boulder sailed past them and landed next to a pond. A crescent-shaped grin appeared above the rock, followed by a pair of yellow eyes. The rest of the Cheshire Cat materialized seconds later, then stood up on his hind legs.

"Have you seen Alice?" Kara asked, getting straight to the point.

"Hmm… Alice, no. Shadows, yes!" the Cheshire Cat replied.

The party traded glances, understanding what he meant immediately. _Heartless._ "Where did they go?" Goofy asked.

The Cheshire Cat pointed in all directions. "This way? That way? Does it matter? This way that way could be that way this way. Left, right, up, down! All mixed up, thanks to the shadows. Were you to try going the familiar ways, it might still drive you up the wall!" He vanished and reappeared, standing on the side of a tree.

"Where are we supposed to look?" Sora asked.

The cat was reclining now, lying on his back so that he was looking at them upside-down. "You just need to look up. But to do that, you ought to look down."

Sora tilted his head, confused. Kara furrowed her brow. Donald crossed his arms and tapped his foot. Goofy scratched his forehead. "What do you mean by that?" Sora asked.

"Ah, well, you'd best ask the Mad Hatter," the Cat said, pointing in one direction.

"_Mad_ Hatter?" Kara parroted. Uncertainly, she turned to Sora. "Wait, does he mean 'angry' or…"

"I think he means 'Mad' as in 'cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs'," Sora replied.

"Oh, joy," Kara said resignedly.

"Or there's the March Hare, in that direction." The Cat pointed down another path.

"I… I think we should go see him. Thanks," Kara said.

"Of course… he's mad too," the Cat added.

Donald stomped his foot in frustration. "We shouldn't have to deal with mad people!" he complained. Sora noticed that, while he had preached to abiding by the order of the worlds they visit, he was growing tired of dealing with the order of Wonderland.

"Oh, you can't help that. Most everyone's mad here." The Cheshire Cat laughed. The purple sections of his body faded away. "You may have noticed that I'm not all there myself," he joked, pointing at his half-invisible body. The rest of his body gradually melted away until he was just a head, which danced and sang "_And the mome raths outgrabe_" as it faded away as well.

Sora shrugged. "Well, we survived the crazy court," he said. "Do you think we can survive a little bit more madness?"

Donald let out a sigh of defeat. "He said that way, right?" he asked, pointing in the direction that the Cheshire Cat had pointed.

"I guess it doesn't matter whether we go to the Mad Hatter or the March Hare, so let's just go that way," Kara said.

* * *

They walked through the forest, fighting Heartless at a few points, before they approached a house with a large garden. The house was made of brown and tan wood with a front door that curved as it went up, a second-floor balcony, a roof that was made entirely of straw, and a square stone chimney that stuck out of the roof. In the garden in front of the house, there was a long table with a pink tablecloth. Nine chairs of different shapes and colors were set up around the table, which was set plates bearing cake and treats as well as teapots and cups. There were several teapots, all puffing out steam, but there were only two people sitting at the table. One was a short old man who wore a green suit, a blue bow tie, and a large green hat. A card was attached to the hat, reading "10/6". The other figure was a rabbit with brown fur, though a tuft on top of his head was yellow, who wore a red suit of the same formal style. As the group drew near, they could hear the man and the rabbit singing something about a "very merry un-birthday".

"Are they the Mad Hatter and the March Hare?" Sora asked as they entered the garden.

"It looks like it," Kara replied.

"Hey, this stuff looks good," Goofy said. He took a seat in the chair at the opposite end of the long table from the Hatter and Hare and reached to pour himself a cup of tea.

The Hatter and the Hare saw him and quickly ran over. "No room, no room, no room, no room, no room, no room, no room!" they protested.

"And it's very rude to sit down without being invited," the March Hare added.

"I say it's rude. It's very, very rude indeed!" the Mad Hatter asked.

A gray-furred mouse dressed in a purple suit stuck his head out of a teapot. "Very, very, very rude indeed," the Dormouse interjected, his eyes sleepy.

"Gee, we're sorry for intruding on your birthday party," Goofy said.

"Birthday? Good sir, this is not a birthday party," the March Hare countered.

"Of course not! This is an Unbirthday Party!" the Mad Hatter corrected. As he spoke, he poured tea into the collar of his suit, letting it come out of his sleeve into a teacup.

"Unbirthday?" Kara parroted, confused.

"Ah, yes. We saw you at the trial. You beat us to the applause, my dear," the Mad Hatter said. "You seemed a lot like that Alice girl. She didn't know what an Unbirthday was, either."

"Then, my dear, let us elucidate. Now, statistics prove, prove that you've one birthday, just one birthday every year," the March Hare began.

"But there are 364 _Un_birthdays," the Mad Hatter explained. "And it's a merry Unbirthday to us!"

"That sounds like fun," Goofy said cheerfully.

"Well, happy Unbirthday," Sora said, humoring the quirky duo. "Speaking of Alice, we think the Heartless might have kidnapped her. Have you seen any shadows around here?"

"Well, now I can't say that any shadows have sat down for tea," the March Hare said, fluttering his ears.

"Really?" Kara asked. "But the Cheshire Cat said that we should ask you."

"Cat?" The Dormouse jumped out of the teapot, running around in a panic, as he feared that there was a cat nearby.

The Mad Hatter and March Hare scrambled across the table after the mouse, knocking china over as they went. "Hurry! Give the jam!" the Hare called out as they tackled and grabbed the mouse. Sora, Kara, Donald, and Goofy frantically searched for the jam. "Quickly!" When Donald found it, Kara took it and brought it over to them at superspeed.

"Put it on his nose," the Hatter instructed. Kara scooped some jam up and spread it on the mouse's face while the Hatter shoved him into a teapot.

"Where's the cat?" the Dormouse asked drowsily before he fell asleep.

"Sorry about that. I didn't know that would set him off," Kara said.

Donald sighed. "Well, now that that's over with, can you tell us where we can find a place where we can look down to look up?" he asked, growing impatient with the shenanigans at play. The only thing keeping him from blowing his top was the fact that they did not seem to be actively malicious—just weird. _A truly mad bunch indeed,_ he thought.

"Look down to look up?" the Mad Hatter parroted as he dipped his tea tray into his teacup and began to eat it like a scone.

"I'm stumped. Let's try another," the March Hare said.

"Why is a raven like a writing desk?" the Hatter posited.

"What? How is that supposed to help us?" Kara complained.

While the others were becoming annoyed, Goofy seemed invested in the riddle. "Why is a raven like a writing desk? Hmm…" he mused.

"I beg your pardon?" the Hatter gasped, choking on a sip of tea.

"Why is a raven like a writing desk?" Kara repeated.

"Why is a… What?" the Hatter cried out.

The March Hare clung to the Hatter frightfully. "Careful! They're stark raving mad!"

"Hey! You're the ones who threw that riddle at us!" Donald complained. The mad duo backed away, the Hatter holding a chair out like a lion tamer would. The duck growled and clenched his fists in anger. "We're trying to find Alice and get rid of the Heartless, and all you're doing is… is… WAAAAAAAAAAAAAK!"

He finally lost his temper. His staff appeared in his hand and he began swinging it about, lobbing fireballs, ice crystals, and thunderbolts left, right, and center. The Hatter and Hare ran about to avoid the spells as they bounced around the garden and off of the table, blasting and smashing the teapots and dishes. Some of the teapots also ran to avoid the duck's wrath. The only item to remain undisturbed was the teapot that the Dormouse was busy sleeping in, heedless of the chaos that had broken out. Sora, Kara and Goofy could only stare in shock as Donald unleashed all of his frustration in the form of spells that utterly ravaged the table and garden.

Finally, Donald had burned himself out, both in his energy to lash out and in his mana to cast spells. He dismissed his staff and slumped forward. Everyone simply stood in silence for a full minute, staring at the destruction that Donald had caused, a silence which was finally broken when the Dormouse poked his head out to drowsily sing "_Twinkle, twinkle, little bat, how I wonder what you're at._"

The Mad Hatter regained his composure and set the still-shivering March Hare down. "Well, now that was very rude indeed. I thought you were more like that girl, but now you're more like those monsters." He ran around the table and pushed the four visitors as a group to the door to his house. "And if you're going to be like those monsters, you had best go the way they'd gone." The March Hare regained his composure as well and ran to open the door, then they both shoved the party through.

Sora turned back to the mad duo when he and his friends had been thrown through. "Wait. I thought you said you didn't…" He trailed off as the Hatter slammed the door. He shrugged, then turned to Donald. "You have some serious anger management issues," he said, still surprised at the duck's explosive outburst.

Donald chuckled nervously. "I guess I overdid it a little," he admitted sheepishly. He let out a sigh. "Well, that got us nowhere."

Kara glanced around their new surroundings, then did a double take as she recognized the interior design of the room. "Maybe not. Look," she said. They all looked around and, once they looked at the ceiling, realized that they were in the Bizarre Room. But why was the table on the ceiling?

"Hey, guys, I think this room's upside-down," Sora realized.

"You know, the Cheshire Cat did say that the Heartless mixed everything up," Goofy mused. "I think this is what he meant."

"'Look down to look up. We're standing on the ceiling, so we would have to look down to look at it," Kara deduced.

"Well, the Mad Hatter did say that the Heartless came this way. Let's track them down," Sora said.

They took only a few steps forward before the Heartless did appear. There were four Shadows, four Soldiers, two Red Nocturnes, two Blue Rhapsodies, and two Large Bodies. Sora, Donald and Goofy summoned their weapons. Donald tried to cast a Fire spell at a Blue Rhapsody, but then remembered that he had expended all of his mana.

"Don't worry, Donald. I've got you," Goofy said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a cubical jar with a tin lid. The jar was filled with a glowing blue liquid. He handed the jar to Donald, and the duck downed the contents in one gulp. Donald let out a satisfied sigh, pocketed the empty jar, and then raised his staff, ready to fight again.

Sora and Donald used Blizzard and Fire to take out two of the floating Heartless while Kara used freeze breath and heat vision to take out the others. Kara then threw herself at one of the Large Bodies and, before Sora could explain that they can only be hurt from the back, punched it. The punch to the chest did not instantly obliterate it like it had the other varieties of Heartless, but it was sent flying back, and when it collided with the wall, then it burst into dark smoke. Sora laughed, amused and impressed at the manner in which Kara had defeated the Heartless. He took two Soldiers out, then ran around behind the remaining Large Body and attacked it from behind. Kara and Goofy proceeded to mow down the Shadows and Soldiers while Donald cast Fire spells at the Large Body's stomach. At a certain point, the Large Body turned around in an enraged state and charged at him, but Sora ran off before it could start. He ran up a ramp, then jumped back over the Large Body's head and resumed his attack upon landing until it was no more.

"What was in that blue jar?" Sora asked when they had reconvened after clearing out all of the Heartless.

"This?" Goofy took out another, full jar. "This is an Ether. It'll restore your magic."

"The liquid is infused with condensed mana," Donald clarified. "Drinking it has the same effect as absorbing it from the air around you, but it's faster, if you can't afford to wait."

"Wow. Cool," Sora said in response.

"Okay. We followed the Heartless here. So where's Alice?" Kara wondered aloud.

"_And the mome raths outgrabe._" They knew whose voice that was. The Cheshire Cat materialized on the ramp connected to the fireplace chimney, reclining against the brick. "Those were just spots. The big one is hiding somewhere," he told them. "If I were looking for a shadow, I would try turning on the lights." With that, he disappeared.

Kara glanced up at the candlewick lamps in the middle of the room. From their ceiling-mounted perspective, they looked like candles in glass bulbs set upon tall purple tables. "Well, at least that was explained clearly," she remarked. She hovered into the air and then lit the candles with her heat vision.

The Cheshire Cat reappeared on one of the platforms, waving his tail over the edge so that the others could see him. Sora, Donald and Goofy ran up the ramp and jumped over to the other platform so that they could face the cat. "Bravo! All the lights are on. The shadows will appear soon. They'll arise in this room… but somewhere else." Sora tilted his head in confusion. The cat chuckled. "The shadows might go after the doorknob, too." He stood up, picked his head up off of his shoulders, and tossed it away. The head bounced around, singing "_And the mome raths outgrabe_" again while the body faded away. The head hit a pink wooden panel with a grey latch and settled on the ground before vanishing as well.

"The doorknob?" Sora looked up and saw the door with the ever-snoozing Doorknob. He gasped, understanding the cat's riddle. "We have to be in the room when it's right-side-up!"

"But if the gravity's messed up in here, how do we get to the floor?" Goofy asked, confused.

"This is just a hunch, but we should probably be able to get back to normal gravity if we reenter through an entrance on the floor," Kara said. "So if we go back through the hedge maze, we should be where we need to be."

Donald groaned. "Do we really have to go back through that mad tea party?" he whined.

Sora cringed, feeling his pain. He looked around, wondering if there was an alternative path. His gaze settled on the wooden panel. "Hey, do you think that might be a shortcut?" he suggested.

They walked over to the panel. Kara flipped the latch up and tugged. The entire panel fell upward, as if normal gravity still affected it and caused it to drop open. The space beyond was completely dark, so they had no idea where it would lead. Figuring that it was worth a shot, they stepped through and wandered through the darkness.

They soon saw a light at the end of the tunnel and stepped out, finding that they were on top of the hedge wall in the Queen of Hearts' maze. Looking around, they saw where the castle was relative to their position, so they turned to the opposite direction and walked across the shrubbery wall, jumping across a gap every so often and shooting down flying Heartless whenever they appeared, until they reached where they had entered from the passage in the Bizarre Room. They climbed down the hedge and dropped in front of the passage. Sora, Donald and Goofy checked their stock of curatives, then entered the passage, wondering what they would be facing on the other side.


	11. Bizarre Confrontation

**Chapter 11**

**Bizarre Confrontation**

They reentered the Bizarre Room, standing firmly on the floor. They went to check on the Doorknob and found him to still be asleep, but undisturbed.

"Shh… He's trying to sleep." They turned to see the Cheshire Cat appear on the table. They ran over to the table and climbed onto the chair to reach the tabletop, except for Kara, who simply flew. When they were all on the table, the cat stood up and turned to face them. "The shadows should be here soon. Are you prepared for the worst?" He let out a chuckle and shrugged. "If not… too bad." He vanished just as quickly as he had appeared.

Before they had a chance to process what he had said, a giant Heartless dropped from the ceiling. It pushed itself off of the floor and did a backflip over the table. It stood up to its full height, allowing the party to get a good look at the monster before them. It was a skinny creature, with rail-thin legs that split back and forth and bent like scissor jacks, zigzagging arms that appeared to be made of black paper which ended in flat hands with wire-thin fingers, black feet with high heels and tips that curled straight up, and a cylindrical head that was made up of five sections, each with its own face. It had red and black colors in alternating sections, sometimes divided with some yellow strips, and some of its joints were purple. Its color scheme, aside from the purple, reminded Kara of the Queen of Hearts' gown. There was a Heartless emblem on top of its head.

The Trickmaster Heartless crossed its arms and conjured a pair of purple juggling clubs, then spread them out again. It began to dance, juggling its clubs as it did so, signaling the start of the flight.

"Uh-oh. This one's big," Goofy said.

"I think if we return to our normal size, it won't be that threatening," Donald remarked. He turned around to take a sip from the orange jar only to watch both jars flatten themselves out, becoming useless. "Aw, phooey."

Sora summoned the Keyblade. "I guess we're just going to have to do this the hard way," he said.  
The Trickmaster marched toward them and swung its club over the table at them. Sora and Goofy jumped to avoid the attack while Kara hovered up, but Donald was hit and swept off onto the floor. Sora jumped off of the table and hit the Heartless' chest three times in midair before he dropped to the floor. The Trickmaster brought its clubs down on him and Donald, sending them sprawling.

Goofy threw his shield like a discus. It hit the Heartless in the head, bounced off, and returned to his hand. Kara flew up and punched Trickmaster in the head, causing it to stumble backward and nearly drop its clubs. It caught the clubs, cleared its head, and swatted Kara with one of the props. While the blow did not harm her, she was still sent flying. She crashed into the wall, breaking a shelf on impact. A teddy bear that had been propped up on the shelf fell onto the couch below. When the bear landed, a drawing of a book on the corner table transformed into a real book. Kara thought this was odd, but decided not to worry about it and rejoined the fray.

Sora helped Donald to his feet, then ran to climb back up to the tabletop. However, before he could jump onto the chair, the Trickmaster tossed its clubs into the air and clapped its hands. At its command, the chair flattened down into drawing form. Sora stopped and stared in bewilderment. He glared up at the Trickmaster in annoyance, then, with a will to defy it, jumped up as high as he could and grabbed the ledge of the table. He climbed up with Goofy's help, then rolled out of the way as the Heartless slammed its clubs down.

Goofy threw his shield again, and Sora followed up by jumping off of the table and delivering an aerial combo to the Heartless' chest. Donald sent a few Fire spells up at his foe, aiming for the chest and head after finding that attacking the feet had no effect. Kara flew in to punch it again, but it swatted her up with its club. She hit the ceiling and landed on one of the lanterns, slightly dazed. When she reoriented herself, she shot her heat vision at the top of the Heartless' head. The searing pain in its scalp caused it to lose focus, dropping one of its clubs. Seeing an opening, Goofy threw his shield, striking it in the face. The Trickmaster collapsed, dropping to its knees and slumping down, stunned. Everyone saw the opportunity open up. Kara and Goofy dropped to the floor and joined Sora and Donald in whaling on the Heartless, now that it was immobile and at a level that they could reach.

After several seconds, the Trickmaster regained consciousness and stood back up, picking its clubs up as it did so. Knowing that the first thing any of them would do would be to climb back onto the table to get within range again, it tossed its clubs into the air and clapped its hands, causing the table to flatten itself into a drawing again in a puff of smoke. It juggled confidently, daring its opponents to challenge its control over the domain.

* * *

_Its first memory in its current state took place in the castle's croquet garden. It felt a familiarity with the place, though it was unsure of what was going on, so it stretched and contracted itself to hide in the shadows as it maneuvered around. After sneaking past the flat guards and making its way into the hedge maze, it stopped when it saw some strange creatures, most of which were marked with weird symbols. They were certainly unusual, but it felt as though they were the same as it. It seemed set to watch them curiously, but it felt drawn to climb out of its hiding place when one of the red ones conjured a fireball. Although it could not create fire on its own, it seemed to be attracted to the flame in a way that it could not comprehend._

_It was then that the phantom appeared. It wondered what the figure was. He did not seem like the creatures at all, though he was not quite like the flat guards. He told it to search for two things of great value. It had thought that they would be in the castle, so it searched every inch, finding it easier to stretch itself and hide in every shadow, but it found nothing. It made its way to the outdoor courtroom, where it spied the fat queen lording over her flat guards. It was then that it had felt a hunger toward something about all those present, but it felt a strong intention to consume the queen. It rose out of the shadows, calling more creatures to assist it in the attack, and expanding its size to dominate the space. Retaliation by the soldiers and disorienting trickery by a purple cat led to its assistants being destroyed and forced it to flee. In fear of reprisal after losing its forces, it desired a scapegoat, and as such shaped the shadow of a girl whom it had felt wander around the woods earlier. It was not until she had arrived at the castle grounds that it realized that she was one of the things it had been told to seek, and that turning the queen's attention to her would have been a fatal mistake._

* * *

The Trickmaster marched over to the stove, ignited it, and held its clubs over the flames. The clubs were instantly set on fire, so the Trickmaster returned to the fight, now juggling flaming clubs.

Sora looked around, trying to find a way to gain a vantage point to get close to the Heartless' head and torso. Turning around, he saw the corner table, which was the highest point he could access on his own. But that would also allow the Heartless to box them into a corner. At least he, Donald and Goofy would have a fighting chance. "This way!" he called to his friends as he ran to the table, clambering onto the couch to reach it.

Kara flew around the Heartless, flying in for a punch every so often. On her third try, the Trickmaster managed to hit her with a club, swatting her away and bouncing her off of the ceiling, a wall, the adjacent wall, and the floor. She picked herself up, cleared her head, used freeze breath to extinguish the flames on her shirt, and shot back into the air.

"Alright. We'll need to put the flames out before we can try to get close," Donald said.

Sora nodded. He aimed the Keyblade at one of the clubs and cast Blizzard. However, with the way the Heartless was juggling, none of the ice crystals made contact. Donald pointed his staff up and cast Blizzard, but his attempt failed as well. They both tried again, to no avail. Kara tried to help with her freeze breath, but she was also having no luck as the Heartless would not keep its clubs still. She tried to grab one of the clubs, but the Heartless simply swatted her aside before she could get a grip.

Goofy had stepped back to let Sora and Donald take charge. He knew that he could not attack up close and that throwing his shield would probably get in their way. Noticing the book that had become real moments before, he examined it curiously. He opened the cover and saw that a hole had been cut out of the pages, and there was a pale blue crystal tucked into the hole. _Mythril?_ he thought as he took the crystal out. _What's this doing in a book? Oh, well. Not the strangest thing around here._ He shrugged and pocketed the ore.

After dodging a fireball blown off of the clubs by the Trickmaster, Sora watched the clubs fly is it returned to juggling. He kept track of the pattern of the Heartless tossing its clubs into the air and determined how he was going to act. He took a deep breath and raised the Keyblade, aimed it the way he wanted, and waited for the right moment. "Deep Freeze!" he shouted, choosing a new invocation with a more familiar association of the spell's effects. The spell was cast, and two ice crystals hit the clubs, exploding into a mist that enveloped them and put the flames out, while the central crystal hit the Heartless in its lowest face. He cheered in triumph, then jumped up to attack the Heartless. In between his combos, Donald cast spells while Goofy threw his shield and Kara shot heat vision at the head.

The Trickmaster decided to go for a new tactic. It had run out of ways to get one over the boy, the mage and the knight, and its standard attacks did no actual harm to the flying girl. There was, however, one thing that it knew would harm her, and since she hit the hardest, it would take her out of commission. With a sleight of hand trick, it dismissed one of its clubs and conjured the glowing green rock.

* * *

_It had to think fast or the girl would lose her head soon enough. It could rise up and have its fellow creatures drag her into the shadows, but its prior experience dealing with the flat guards discouraged it from that idea. The arrival of the four strangers was a lucky twist of fate. They offered to prove that the girl was not responsible for the attack, so the guards locked her in the cage with the curtain. From there, it determined that things could go either way, but going off of the darkness that it had sensed in the queen's heart, as well as the way she responded to trivial slights, it determined that she would simply have the girl executed if they failed and become hostile toward the strangers if they succeeded._

_It felt a strong connection to the land, and found that it could bend the earth and gravity. Testing its powers, it created windows that showed localized areas. It then had an idea, and it created boxes that contained viewpoints that showed points that the creatures had interacted with, then scattered the boxes around in places that the strangers would find. It then watched their progress, gauging their capabilities. It sensed a powerful light from the boy and the girl. For the boy, it seemed to be a quality that shone in his heart and manifested itself more abundantly in the giant key he held, which made it very uneasy. For the girl, the light seemed to fill every cell of her being, and there may have been a relationship between that light and the feats that she was able to accomplish. As it watched them gather the evidence and fight the creatures, it took note of their strengths, their magic, the power of the key, and most intriguingly the effect that the glowing green rock had on the girl._

_When the boy presented the evidence, it felt the urge to project an image of one of the creatures when the box was opened for a bit of dramatic flair. Once the curtain was drawn on the girl, it struck immediately. It had a creature drag her into a portal to wherever the phantom wanted her to go before she could even react. Since that part of the job was taken care of, it focused its search for the other target, which it had sensed was in the room with the pink walls. It moved itself into the room to strike, but found that the target would not reveal itself in the current circumstances, so it decided to wait for the circumstances to change so it can complete its goal. Anticipating the possibility of the boy, the girl, the mage, and the knight coming to try to stop it, it altered the room so that the gravity would affect anyone who entered differently depending on the path they used to enter, so that they would not attain a high ground advantage by dropping from the ceiling onto the stove or the water faucet._

* * *

The rock's rays hit Kara immediately. Feeling incredibly weak and dizzy, she fell out of the air and hit the ground. She exhaled sharply on impact, feeling great pain in her leg from the crash.

"Kara!" Sora called out. The Trickmaster turned to approach her so that it could finish her off with its green club. Unwilling to let that happen, Sora threw the Keyblade up, hitting it in the head. He sighed as he watched the weapon clatter to the ground and moved to retrieve it.

"Sora! Just call it back to your hand!" Donald advised, interrupting him before he could do something unnecessary.

"Huh?" Sora stopped himself and turned back to Donald, confused. To clarify his point, Donald dismissed his staff, then summoned it again. "Oh." He turned to look directly at the Keyblade and reached his hand out, willing it to appear in his grasp. Just like it had left Squall's hand and appeared in his own back in Traverse Town, the Keyblade vanished in a flash of light and reappeared in his hand. "Thanks," he said. Donald let out a sigh. He could tell that Sora had received no training or experience before their first meeting; even the greenest of Keybearers would have learned to do that, or at least he thought so. If he had not told him, what would he have done if someone had tried to steal it and run around with it?

Sora threw the Keyblade again, summoning it back to his hand immediately after it hit the Heartless on the head. In between his attacks, Goofy threw his shield with the same effect, though it aerodynamically flew and dropped back down for him to catch, and Donald cast Blizzard and called down bolts of lightning. After yet another blow from the Keyblade, the Trickmaster buckled over and fell to its knees, dropping its clubs as it went down.

Sora, Donald and Goofy jumped off of the table and gathered around the green rock. "How do we get rid of it?" Donald asked.

Goofy looked around the room in search of a way to dispose of the rock. When he saw the open book again, he had an idea. "Let's get it in the book," he suggested. Without waiting for them to make sense of what he had said, he scooped the rock up onto the concave side of his shield, climbed onto the table, and dropped it into the hole in the pages. Sora and Donald caught up to him just as he closed the book. However, green rays of light still shone through the pages, and Kara was still splayed on the floor, in pain from the radiation. Goofy scratched his noggin contemplatively. "How do we get the book to disappear?" he wondered aloud.

Sora crossed his arms. "This book used to be a drawing, right? How did it become real in the first place?" he asked.

"I think it was when that teddy bear fell onto the sofa," Goofy explained.

Sora and Donald turned to look at the stuffed bear. Sora considered how the Wonderland rules would relate the bear falling to the book becoming real, and something clicked. "I think we need to move the bear," he said. He jumped onto the couch and tried to push the bear off, but he was too small. Goofy ran around to the other side to help him. Goofy had the strength to move the bear on his own, but he did not have the leverage, so he and Sora worked together to throw the bear off of the couch. As it tumbled to the floor, the book sank into the table, becoming nothing more than a drawing once again. There was no green radiation shining from it.

Without missing a beat, Sora, Donald and Goofy ran over to check on Kara. They sighed with relief as the green glow faded from her veins, though she still seemed weak and hurt, and her leg sat at an odd angle. Donald raised his staff and shouted "Heal!" Green mist fell over Kara, being absorbed into her skin. She began to breathe evenly, and her leg reset into a proper position. She pushed herself up, and Sora helped her to her feet.

"Thanks," she said. Sora and Donald nodded in reply. They turned to face the Trickmaster, which was starting to come to. "Let's put an end to this thing's games." As it reached for its remaining club, she ran over at super speed and blew cold breath over it. Frost formed on the club as it froze through. She then picked it up and threw it at the opposite wall, letting it shatter on impact. Realizing that it was in trouble, the Trickmaster tried to get up quickly, but Kara leapt up and punched it in the top face, then dragged it down to the floor by the head and pinned it down. Sora ran over as it flailed around in a futile effort to free itself. He stopped next to Kara, raised the Keyblade, and drove the tip straight into the middle face as hard as he could.

The Heartless spasmed violently before collapsing flat on the floor. It was completely immobile save for its paper arms, which waved about mindlessly in the air. A sphere of light glowed from its chest, and a crystalline heart, much like the one that had been released by the Guard Armor, floated up before vanishing. Streams of blue light bled off of the Heartless' body like a flame as the vanquished monster dissolved into light particles. Kara relaxed, realizing that she was no longer holding onto anything, and Sora saw that the Keyblade was not stuck in anything more than the cracked floor.

Sora, Kara, Donald, and Goofy turned to face each other, watching the last of the light particles fade away. "We did it!" Sora cheered.

"That Heartless couldn't stop us!" Donald bragged.

"You feeling alright, Kara?" Goofy asked, concerned for her well-being after her exposure to the green rock's radiation.

Kara nodded. "Still a bit woozy, but I'm fine now. Thanks," she replied.

From the other side of the room, they heard a yawn. They turned to see that the Doorknob had woken up. Wondering what the Heartless had wanted to go after him for, they approached him.

"What a racket," he complained. "How's a doorknob to get any sleep?" He yawned again, and a shape lit up within his mouth. The party peered closer, curious, and saw that it was shaped like an old-fashioned keyhole. The shape began to glow brilliantly.

Sora felt energy swirl around the Keyblade and saw light wrap around the tip. Star shapes formed around the light, and the tip began to glow. The Keyblade suddenly moved on its own, jolting Sora as it aimed itself at the keyhole in the Doorknob's mouth. A beam of light shot out of the tip and into the keyhole. He heard the sound of a lock engaging as the light faded and the Doorknob's mouth closed. Sora regained control of the Keyblade and he stood up straight, staring at the weapon in bemusement.

"What was that?" Donald asked.

"Did you hear that? It sounded like something closed," Kara said.

"Huh. Maybe that was what that Heartless was after," Goofy guessed.

"But what was it? And why did the Keyblade react like that?" Sora wondered aloud.

The table rose back up behind them, along with the chair and the size-changing jars, and the Cheshire Cat appeared on top of it. "Splendid. You're quite the heroes," the cat commended, gaining their attention. They turned to address him and ask a question that lingered after defeating the master of the shadows. "If you're looking for Alice, I'm afraid she's not here," he said, as if he had read their minds. "She's gone! Taken away. Off with the shadows, into darkness." Having nothing more to say, the Cheshire Cat vanished.

"She's just… gone?" Sora said sadly. They had gone through all of that, but they still were not able to find her?

Kara put her hand on his shoulder to comfort him. "Hey, maybe we can still find her. She might be on another world," she suggested.

"She's right," Donald agreed. "Let's head back to the ship."

* * *

They drank from the orange jar and returned to their original sizes, then reentered the room that they had first dropped into when arriving in Wonderland. Donald checked a device that connected to the Gummi Ship and found that the point they were standing in did still serve as a viable point to beam up and down. He entered a command into the device, and all four of them were warped up into the ship. They took their seats in the cockpit and Donald brought the console displays up to each of them. Sora noticed that more nodes had appeared on the render map of the world. Jiminy climbed out of Sora's pocket and jumped on top of the display in front of Sora.

"Oh, hey, Jiminy. I kinda forgot about you," Goofy admitted.

"Were you still in my pocket the whole time? But you didn't drink the potion. Did you shrink with us?" Sora asked.

"I don't know. It might have been the same case as with your clothes and the stuff in your pocket," Jiminy surmised. "I guess it treated me as a part of your person and shrank me with you."

"Oh, well. That just makes it less trouble for us," Donald said. "Did you take some good notes on Wonderland?"

Jiminy nodded and patted his blazer, where he had his journal pocketed. "Yep. I've got to say, that world was pretty strange. But it was nice getting to learn about it and the people who live there."

"Yeah, I guess it was nice getting to see it," Donald conceded, nodding in assent. "But I don't think I want to go back there again."

"Well, when we find Alice, we can take her to her own world," Goofy said. With that, a somber silence fell over the ship. They were all swallowed with regret for being unable to save Alice.

"What do you think happened to her?" Kara asked.

"That cat said that the Heartless took her. Can we really be sure that she didn't lose her heart?" Donald wondered.

Kara shuddered at the memory of the man who was attacked and consumed by Heartless. A chill went up her spine at the thought of that same fate befalling an innocent young girl like Alice.

"I don't think that happened," Sora said. All eyes turned to him, wondering why he thought so. "I think she might still be alive."

"What makes you so sure?" Kara asked.

Sora shook his head. "I don't know. I just… have a feeling." He put his hand over his heart to emphasize.

"You might be right," Goofy said. "Besides, if she did lose her heart to the Heartless, don't you think the Cheshire Cat woulda said so? Instead, he just said she was taken. I'm sure we'll find her somewhere along the way."

Kara smiled. "Okay. Then let's go find her." She stared up through the window out into space. "So, where to next?"

Sora brought the world map up on the radar and turned it to face Donald. Donald tapped on a dot that signified one of the nearby worlds, then nodded. "That one. Set a course." Sora turned the screen back to himself and did as he said. Everyone buckled in for the ride. Donald started the engine, put the ship in gear, and launched for the next world.


End file.
